infocmp(1m) infocmp(1m)
infocmp - compare or print out terminfo descriptions
infocmp [-1CDEFGIKLTUVcdegilnpqrtux]
[-v n] [-s d| i| l| c] [-R subset]
[-w width] [-A directory] [-B directory]
[termname...]
infocmp can be used to compare a binary terminfo entry
with other terminfo entries, rewrite a terminfo descrip-
tion to take advantage of the use= terminfo field, or
print out a terminfo description from the binary file
(term) in a variety of formats. In all cases, the boolean
fields will be printed first, followed by the numeric
fields, followed by the string fields.
If no options are specified and zero or one termnames are
specified, the -I option will be assumed. If more than
one termname is specified, the -d option will be assumed.
infocmp compares the terminfo description of the first
terminal termname with each of the descriptions given by
the entries for the other terminal's termnames. If a
capability is defined for only one of the terminals, the
value returned will depend on the type of the capability:
F for boolean variables, -1 for integer variables, and
NULL for string variables.
The -d option produces a list of each capability that is
different between two entries. This option is useful to
show the difference between two entries, created by dif-
ferent people, for the same or similar terminals.
The -c option produces a list of each capability that is
common between two or more entries. Capabilities that are
not set are ignored. This option can be used as a quick
check to see if the -u option is worth using.
The -n option produces a list of each capability that is
in none of the given entries. If no termnames are given,
the environment variable TERM will be used for both of the
termnames. This can be used as a quick check to see if
anything was left out of a description.
The -I, -L, and -C options will produce a source listing
for each terminal named.
-I use the terminfo names
-L use the long C variable name listed in <term.h>
-C use the termcap names
-r when using -C, put out all capabilities in termcap form
-K modifies the -C option, improving BSD-compatibility.
If no termnames are given, the environment variable TERM
will be used for the terminal name.
The source produced by the -C option may be used directly
as a termcap entry, but not all parameterized strings can
be changed to the termcap format. infocmp will attempt to
convert most of the parameterized information, and any-
thing not converted will be plainly marked in the output
and commented out. These should be edited by hand.
For best results when converting to termcap format, you
should use both -C and -r. Normally a termcap description
is limited to 1023 bytes. infocmp trims away less essen-
tial parts to make it fit. If you are converting to one
of the (rare) termcap implementations which accept an
unlimited size of termcap, you may want to add the -T
option. More often however, you must help the termcap
implementation, and trim excess whitespace (use the -0
option for that).
All padding information for strings will be collected
together and placed at the beginning of the string where
termcap expects it. Mandatory padding (padding informa-
tion with a trailing '/') will become optional.
All termcap variables no longer supported by terminfo, but
which are derivable from other terminfo variables, will be
output. Not all terminfo capabilities will be translated;
only those variables which were part of termcap will nor-
mally be output. Specifying the -r option will take off
this restriction, allowing all capabilities to be output
in termcap form. Normally you would use both the -C and
-r options. The actual format used incorporates some
improvements for escaped characters from terminfo format.
For a stricter BSD-compatible translation, use the -K
option rather than -C.
Note that because padding is collected to the beginning of
the capability, not all capabilities are output. Manda-
tory padding is not supported. Because termcap strings
are not as flexible, it is not always possible to convert
a terminfo string capability into an equivalent termcap
format. A subsequent conversion of the termcap file back
into terminfo format will not necessarily reproduce the
original terminfo source.
Some common terminfo parameter sequences, their termcap
equivalents, and some terminal types which commonly have
such sequences, are:
terminfo termcap Representative Terminals
---------------------------------------------------------------
%p1%c %. adm
%p1%d %d hp, ANSI standard, vt100
%p1%'x'%+%c %+x concept
%i %iq ANSI standard, vt100
%p1%?%'x'%>%t%p1%'y'%+%; %>xy concept
%p2 is printed before %p1 %r hp
The -u option produces a terminfo source description of
the first terminal termname which is relative to the sum
of the descriptions given by the entries for the other
terminals termnames. It does this by analyzing the dif-
ferences between the first termname and the other
termnames and producing a description with use= fields for
the other terminals. In this manner, it is possible to
retrofit generic terminfo entries into a terminal's
description. Or, if two similar terminals exist, but were
coded at different times or by different people so that
each description is a full description, using infocmp will
show what can be done to change one description to be rel-
ative to the other.
A capability will get printed with an at-sign (@) if it no
longer exists in the first termname, but one of the other
termname entries contains a value for it. A capability's
value gets printed if the value in the first termname is
not found in any of the other termname entries, or if the
first of the other termname entries that has this capabil-
ity gives a different value for the capability than that
in the first termname.
The order of the other termname entries is significant.
Since the terminfo compiler tic does a left-to-right scan
of the capabilities, specifying two use= entries that con-
tain differing entries for the same capabilities will pro-
duce different results depending on the order that the
entries are given in. infocmp will flag any such incon-
sistencies between the other termname entries as they are
found.
Alternatively, specifying a capability after a use= entry
that contains that capability will cause the second speci-
fication to be ignored. Using infocmp to recreate a
description can be a useful check to make sure that every-
thing was specified correctly in the original source
description.
Another error that does not cause incorrect compiled
files, but will slow down the compilation time, is speci-
fying extra use= fields that are superfluous. infocmp
will flag any other termname use= fields that were not
needed.
Changing Databases [-A directory] [-B directory]
Like other ncurses utilities, infocmp looks for the termi-
nal descriptions in several places. You can use the TER-
MINFO and TERMINFO_DIRS environment variables to override
the compiled-in default list of places to search (see
curses(3x) for details).
You can also use the options -A and -B to override the
list of places to search when comparing terminal descrip-
tions:
o The -A option sets the location for the first termname
o The -B option sets the location for the other
termnames.
Using these options, it is possible to compare descrip-
tions for a terminal with the same name located in two
different databases. For instance, you can use this fea-
ture for comparing descriptions for the same terminal cre-
ated by different people.
-0 causes the fields to be printed on one line, without
wrapping.
-1 causes the fields to be printed out one to a line.
Otherwise, the fields will be printed several to a
line to a maximum width of 60 characters.
-a tells infocmp to retain commented-out capabilities
rather than discarding them. Capabilities are com-
mented by prefixing them with a period.
-D tells infocmp to print the database locations that it
knows about, and exit.
-E Dump the capabilities of the given terminal as
tables, needed in the C initializer for a TERMTYPE
structure (the terminal capability structure in the
<term.h>). This option is useful for preparing ver-
sions of the curses library hardwired for a given
terminal type. The tables are all declared static,
and are named according to the type and the name of
the corresponding terminal entry.
Before ncurses 5.0, the split between the -e and -E
options was not needed; but support for extended
names required making the arrays of terminal capabil-
ities separate from the TERMTYPE structure.
-e Dump the capabilities of the given terminal as a C
initializer for a TERMTYPE structure (the terminal
capability structure in the <term.h>). This option
is useful for preparing versions of the curses
library hardwired for a given terminal type.
-F compare terminfo files. This assumes that two fol-
lowing arguments are filenames. The files are
searched for pairwise matches between entries, with
two entries considered to match if any of their names
do. The report printed to standard output lists
entries with no matches in the other file, and
entries with more than one match. For entries with
exactly one match it includes a difference report.
Normally, to reduce the volume of the report, use
references are not resolved before looking for dif-
ferences, but resolution can be forced by also speci-
fying -r.
-f Display complex terminfo strings which contain
if/then/else/endif expressions indented for readabil-
ity.
-G Display constant literals in decimal form rather than
their character equivalents.
-g Display constant character literals in quoted form
rather than their decimal equivalents.
-i Analyze the initialization (is1, is2, is3), and reset
(rs1, rs2, rs3), strings in the entry, as well as
those used for starting/stopping cursor-positioning
mode (smcup, rmcup) as well as starting/stopping
keymap mode (smkx, rmkx).
For each string, the code tries to analyze it into
actions in terms of the other capabilities in the
entry, certain X3.64/ISO 6429/ECMA-48 capabilities,
and certain DEC VT-series private modes (the set of
recognized special sequences has been selected for
completeness over the existing terminfo database).
Each report line consists of the capability name,
followed by a colon and space, followed by a print-
able expansion of the capability string with sections
matching recognized actions translated into {}-brack-
eted descriptions.
Here is a list of the DEC/ANSI special sequences rec-
ognized:
Action Meaning
-----------------------------------------
RIS full reset
SC save cursor
RC restore cursor
LL home-down
RSR reset scroll region
-----------------------------------------
DECSTR soft reset (VT320)
S7C1T 7-bit controls (VT220)
-----------------------------------------
ISO DEC G0 enable DEC graphics for G0
ISO UK G0 enable UK chars for G0
ISO US G0 enable US chars for G0
ISO DEC G1 enable DEC graphics for G1
ISO UK G1 enable UK chars for G1
ISO US G1 enable US chars for G1
-----------------------------------------
DECPAM application keypad mode
DECPNM normal keypad mode
DECANSI enter ANSI mode
-----------------------------------------
ECMA[+-]AM keyboard action mode
ECMA[+-]IRM insert replace mode
ECMA[+-]SRM send receive mode
ECMA[+-]LNM linefeed mode
-----------------------------------------
DEC[+-]CKM application cursor keys
DEC[+-]ANM set VT52 mode
DEC[+-]COLM 132-column mode
DEC[+-]SCLM smooth scroll
DEC[+-]SCNM reverse video mode
DEC[+-]OM origin mode
DEC[+-]AWM wraparound mode
DEC[+-]ARM auto-repeat mode
It also recognizes a SGR action corresponding to
ANSI/ISO 6429/ECMA Set Graphics Rendition, with the
values NORMAL, BOLD, UNDERLINE, BLINK, and REVERSE.
All but NORMAL may be prefixed with `+' (turn on) or
`-' (turn off).
An SGR0 designates an empty highlight sequence
(equivalent to {SGR:NORMAL}).
-l Set output format to terminfo.
-p Ignore padding specifications when comparing strings.
-q Make the comparison listing shorter by omitting sub-
headings, and using "-" for absent capabilities, "@"
for canceled rather than "NULL".
-Rsubset
Restrict output to a given subset. This option is
for use with archaic versions of terminfo like those
on SVr1, Ultrix, or HP/UX that do not support the
full set of SVR4/XSI Curses terminfo; and variants
such as AIX that have their own extensions incompati-
ble with SVr4/XSI.
Available terminfo subsets are "SVr1", "Ultrix",
"HP", and "AIX"; see terminfo(5) for details. You
can also choose the subset "BSD" which selects only
capabilities with termcap equivalents recognized by
4.4BSD.
-s [d|i|l|c]
The -s option sorts the fields within each type
according to the argument below:
d leave fields in the order that they are stored
in the terminfo database.
i sort by terminfo name.
l sort by the long C variable name.
c sort by the termcap name.
If the -s option is not given, the fields printed out
will be sorted alphabetically by the terminfo name
within each type, except in the case of the -C or the
-L options, which cause the sorting to be done by the
termcap name or the long C variable name, respec-
tively.
-T eliminates size-restrictions on the generated text.
This is mainly useful for testing and analysis, since
the compiled descriptions are limited (e.g., 1023 for
termcap, 4096 for terminfo).
-t tells tic to discard commented-out capabilities.
Normally when translating from terminfo to termcap,
untranslatable capabilities are commented-out.
-U tells infocmp to not post-process the data after
parsing the source file. This feature helps when
comparing the actual contents of two source files,
since it excludes the inferences that infocmp makes
to fill in missing data.
-V reports the version of ncurses which was used in this
program, and exits.
-v n prints out tracing information on standard error as
the program runs. Higher values of n induce greater
verbosity.
-w width
changes the output to width characters.
-x print information for user-defined capabilities.
These are extensions to the terminfo repertoire which
can be loaded using the -x option of tic.
/usr/share/terminfo Compiled terminal description data-
base.
The -0, -1, -E, -F, -G, -R, -T, -V, -a, -e, -f, -g, -i,
-l, -p, -q and -t options are not supported in SVr4
curses.
The -r option's notion of `termcap' capabilities is System
V Release 4's. Actual BSD curses versions will have a
more restricted set. To see only the 4.4BSD set, use -r
-RBSD.
The -F option of infocmp(1m) should be a toe(1m) mode.
captoinfo(1m), infotocap(1m), tic(1m), toe(1m),
curses(3x), terminfo(5).
http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tctest.html
This describes ncurses version 6.0 (patch 20150808).
Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> and
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
infocmp(1m)