infocmp
Section: Misc. Reference Manual Pages (1M)
Updated:
Index
Return to Main Contents
NAME
infocmp - compare or print out
terminfo descriptions
SYNOPSIS
infocmp [
-1CDEFGIKLTUVcdegilnpqrtux]
[
-v n] [
-s d|
i|
l|
c] [
-R subset]
[
-w width] [
-A directory] [
-B directory]
[
termname...]
DESCRIPTION
infocmp can be used to compare a binary
terminfo entry with other
terminfo entries, rewrite a
terminfo description 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.
Default Options
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.
Comparison Options [-d] [-c] [-n]
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 different 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.
Source Listing Options [-I] [-L] [-C] [-r]
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 anything 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 essential 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 information 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 normally 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.
Mandatory 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
|
Use= Option [-u]
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 differences 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 relative 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 capability 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 contain differing entries for the same
capabilities will produce different results depending on the order that the
entries are given in.
infocmp will flag any such inconsistencies 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 specification to be ignored.
Using infocmp to recreate a description can be a useful check to make
sure that everything 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 specifying 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 terminal descriptions in several places.
You can use the
TERMINFO 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 descriptions:
- *
-
The -A option sets the location for the first termname
- *
-
The -B option sets the location for the other termnames.
Using these options, it is possible to
compare descriptions for a terminal with the same name located in two different
databases.
For instance,
you can use this feature for comparing descriptions for the same terminal
created by different people.
Other Options
- -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 commented 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 versions 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 capabilities 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 following 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 differences, but resolution can be forced
by also specifying -r.
- -f
-
Display complex terminfo strings which contain if/then/else/endif expressions
indented for readability.
- -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 printable
expansion of the capability string with sections matching recognized actions
translated into {}-bracketed descriptions.
-
Here is a list of the DEC/ANSI
special sequences recognized:
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 subheadings, 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 incompatible 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, respectively.
- -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.
FILES
- /usr/share/terminfo
-
Compiled terminal description database.
EXTENSIONS
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.
BUGS
The
-F option of
infocmp(1M) should be a
toe(1M) mode.
SEE ALSO
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).
AUTHOR
Eric S. Raymond <
esr@snark.thyrsus.com>
and
Thomas E. Dickey <
dickey@invisible-island.net>
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- Default Options
-
- Comparison Options [-d] [-c] [-n]
-
- Source Listing Options [-I] [-L] [-C] [-r]
-
- Use= Option [-u]
-
- Changing Databases [-A directory] [-B directory]
-
- Other Options
-
- FILES
-
- EXTENSIONS
-
- BUGS
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- AUTHOR
-