infocmp(1) User commands infocmp(1) #
infocmp(1) User commands infocmp(1)
NNAAMMEE #
iinnffooccmmpp - compare or print out _t_e_r_m_i_n_f_o descriptions
SSYYNNOOPPSSIISS #
iinnffooccmmpp [--11CCDDEEFFGGIIKKLLTTUUVVWWccddeeggiillnnppqqrrttuuxx]
[--vv _n] [--ss dd| ii| ll| cc] [--QQ _n] [--RR ssuubbsseett]
[--ww _w_i_d_t_h] [--AA _d_i_r_e_c_t_o_r_y] [--BB _d_i_r_e_c_t_o_r_y]
[_t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e...]
DDEESSCCRRIIPPTTIIOONN #
iinnffooccmmpp can be used to compare a binary tteerrmmiinnffoo entry with other
terminfo entries, rewrite a tteerrmmiinnffoo description to take advantage of the
uussee== terminfo field, or print out a tteerrmmiinnffoo description from the binary
file (tteerrmm) 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.
DDeeffaauulltt OOppttiioonnss If no options are specified and zero or one _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e_s are specified, the --II option will be assumed. If more than one _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e is specified, the --dd option will be assumed.
CCoommppaarriissoonn OOppttiioonnss [[--dd]] [[--cc]] [[--nn]] iinnffooccmmpp compares the tteerrmmiinnffoo description of the first terminal _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e with each of the descriptions given by the entries for the other terminal’s _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e_s. If a capability is defined for only one of the terminals, the value returned depends on the type of the capability:
• FF for missing boolean variables
• NNUULLLL for missing integer or string variables
Use the --qq option to show the distinction between _a_b_s_e_n_t and _c_a_n_c_e_l_l_e_d
capabilities.
These options produce a list which you can use to compare two or more
terminal descriptions:
--dd produces a list of each capability that is _d_i_f_f_e_r_e_n_t between two
entries. Each item in the list shows “:” after the capability name,
followed by the capability values, separated by a comma.
--cc produces a list of each capability that is _c_o_m_m_o_n between two or
more entries. Missing capabilities are ignored. Each item in the
list shows “=” after the capability name, followed by the capability
value.
The --uu option provides a related output, showing the first terminal
description rewritten to use the second as a building block via the
“use=” clause.
--nn produces a list of each capability that is in _n_o_n_e of the given
entries. Each item in the list shows “!” before the capability
name.
Normally only the conventional capabilities are shown. Use the --xx
option to add the BSD-compatibility capabilities (names prefixed
with “OT”).
If no _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e_s are given, iinnffooccmmpp uses the environment variable
TTEERRMM for each of the _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e_s.
SSoouurrccee LLiissttiinngg OOppttiioonnss [[--II]] [[--LL]] [[--CC]] [[--rr]] The --II, --LL, and --CC options will produce a source listing for each terminal named. --II use the tteerrmmiinnffoo names --LL use the long C variable name listed in <tteerrmm..hh> --CC use the tteerrmmccaapp names --rr when using --CC, put out all capabilities in tteerrmmccaapp form --KK modifies the --CC option, improving BSD-compatibility.
If no _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e_s are given, the environment variable TTEERRMM will be used for
the terminal name.
The source produced by the --CC option may be used directly as a tteerrmmccaapp
entry, but not all parameterized strings can be changed to the tteerrmmccaapp
format. iinnffooccmmpp 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 tteerrmmccaapp format, you should use both
--CC and --rr. Normally a termcap description is limited to 1023 bytes.
iinnffooccmmpp 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 --TT option. More often
however, you must help the termcap implementation, and trim excess
whitespace (use the --00 option for that).
All padding information for strings will be collected together and placed
at the beginning of the string where tteerrmmccaapp expects it. Mandatory
padding (padding information with a trailing “/”) will become optional.
All tteerrmmccaapp variables no longer supported by tteerrmmiinnffoo, but which are
derivable from other tteerrmmiinnffoo variables, will be output. Not all
tteerrmmiinnffoo capabilities will be translated; only those variables which were
part of tteerrmmccaapp will normally be output. Specifying the --rr option will
take off this restriction, allowing all capabilities to be output in
_t_e_r_m_c_a_p form. Normally you would use both the --CC and --rr options. The
actual format used incorporates some improvements for escaped characters
from terminfo format. For a stricter BSD-compatible translation, use the
--KK option rather than --CC.
Note that because padding is collected to the beginning of the
capability, not all capabilities are output. Mandatory padding is not
supported. Because tteerrmmccaapp strings are not as flexible, it is not always
possible to convert a tteerrmmiinnffoo string capability into an equivalent
tteerrmmccaapp format. A subsequent conversion of the tteerrmmccaapp file back into
tteerrmmiinnffoo format will not necessarily reproduce the original tteerrmmiinnffoo
source.
Some common tteerrmmiinnffoo parameter sequences, their tteerrmmccaapp equivalents, and
some terminal types which commonly have such sequences, are:
tteerrmmiinnffoo tteerrmmccaapp Representative Terminals
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
%%pp11%%cc %%.. adm
%%pp11%%dd %%dd hp, ANSI standard, vt100
%%pp11%%''xx''%%++%%cc %%++xx concept
%%ii %%iiq ANSI standard, vt100
%%pp11%%??%%''xx''%%>>%%tt%%pp11%%''yy''%%++%%;; %%>>xxyy concept
%%pp22 is printed before %%pp11 %%rr hp
UUssee== OOppttiioonn [[--uu]] The --uu option produces a tteerrmmiinnffoo source description of the first terminal _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e which is relative to the sum of the descriptions given by the entries for the other terminals _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e_s. It does this by analyzing the differences between the first _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e and the other _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e_s and producing a description with uussee== 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 iinnffooccmmpp will show what can be done to change one description to be relative to the other.
A capability will be printed with an at-sign (@) if it no longer exists
in the first _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e, but one of the other _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e entries contains a
value for it. A capability's value will be printed if the value in the
first _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e is not found in any of the other _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e entries, or if
the first of the other _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e entries that has this capability gives a
different value for the capability than that in the first _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e.
The order of the other _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e entries is significant. Since the
terminfo compiler ttiicc does a left-to-right scan of the capabilities,
specifying two uussee== entries that contain differing entries for the same
capabilities will produce different results depending on the order that
the entries are given in. iinnffooccmmpp will flag any such inconsistencies
between the other _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e entries as they are found.
Alternatively, specifying a capability _a_f_t_e_r a uussee== entry that contains
that capability will cause the second specification to be ignored. Using
iinnffooccmmpp 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 uussee== fields that are
superfluous. iinnffooccmmpp will flag any other _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e _u_s_e_= fields that were
not needed.
CChhaannggiinngg DDaattaabbaasseess [[--AA _d_i_r_e_c_t_o_r_y] [-B _d_i_r_e_c_t_o_r_y] Like other nnccuurrsseess utilities, iinnffooccmmpp looks for the terminal descriptions in several places. You can use the TTEERRMMIINNFFOO and TTEERRMMIINNFFOO__DDIIRRSS environment variables to override the compiled-in default list of places to search (see ccuurrsseess(3) for details).
You can also use the options --AA and --BB to override the list of places to
search when comparing terminal descriptions:
• The --AA option sets the location for the first _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e
• The --BB option sets the location for the other _t_e_r_m_n_a_m_e_s.
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.
OOtthheerr OOppttiioonnss --00 causes the fields to be printed on one line, without wrapping.
--11 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.
--aa tells iinnffooccmmpp to retain commented-out capabilities rather than
discarding them. Capabilities are commented by prefixing them with
a period.
--DD tells iinnffooccmmpp to print the database locations that it knows about,
and exit.
--EE Dump the capabilities of the given terminal as tables, needed in the
C initializer for a TERMTYPE structure (the terminal capability
structure in the <<tteerrmm..hh>>). 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 --ee and --EE options was not
needed; but support for extended names required making the arrays of
terminal capabilities separate from the TERMTYPE structure.
--ee Dump the capabilities of the given terminal as a C initializer for a
TERMTYPE structure (the terminal capability structure in the
<<tteerrmm..hh>>). This option is useful for preparing versions of the
curses library hardwired for a given terminal type.
--FF 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 --rr.
--ff Display complex terminfo strings which contain if/then/else/endif
expressions indented for readability.
--GG Display constant literals in decimal form rather than their
character equivalents.
--gg Display constant character literals in quoted form rather than their
decimal equivalents.
--ii Analyze the initialization (iiss11, iiss22, iiss33), and reset (rrss11, rrss22,
rrss33), strings in the entry, as well as those used for
starting/stopping cursor-positioning mode (ssmmccuupp, rrmmccuupp) as well as
starting/stopping keymap mode (ssmmkkxx, rrmmkkxx).
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}). #
--ll Set output format to terminfo.
--pp Ignore padding specifications when comparing strings.
--QQ _n Rather than show source in terminfo (text) format, print the
compiled (binary) format in hexadecimal or base64 form, depending on
the option's value:
1 hexadecimal
2 base64
3 hexadecimal and base64
For example, this prints the compiled terminfo value as a string
which could be assigned to the TTEERRMMIINNFFOO environment variable:
infocmp -0 -q -Q2
--qq This makes the output a little shorter:
• Make the comparison listing shorter by omitting subheadings, and
using “-” for absent capabilities, “@” for canceled rather than
“NULL”. #
• However, show differences between absent and cancelled
capabilities.
• Omit the “Reconstructed from” comment for source listings.
--RR_s_u_b_s_e_t
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 tteerrmmiinnffoo(5) for details.
• You can also choose the subset “BSD” which selects only
capabilities with termcap equivalents recognized by 4.4BSD.
• If you select any other value for --RR, it is the same as no
subset, i.e., all capabilities are used.
A few options override the subset selected with --RR, if they are
processed later in the command parameters:
--CC sets the “BSD” subset as a side-effect.
--II sets the subset to all capabilities.
--rr sets the subset to all capabilities.
--ss _[_d_|_i_|_l_|_c_]
The --ss option sorts the fields within each type according to the
argument below:
dd leave fields in the order that they are stored in the _t_e_r_m_i_n_f_o
database.
ii sort by _t_e_r_m_i_n_f_o name.
ll sort by the long C variable name.
cc sort by the _t_e_r_m_c_a_p name.
If the --ss option is not given, the fields printed out will be sorted
alphabetically by the tteerrmmiinnffoo name within each type, except in the
case of the --CC or the --LL options, which cause the sorting to be done
by the tteerrmmccaapp name or the long C variable name, respectively.
--TT 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).
--tt tells ttiicc to discard commented-out capabilities. Normally when
translating from terminfo to termcap, untranslatable capabilities
are commented-out.
--UU tells iinnffooccmmpp 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 iinnffooccmmpp makes to
fill in missing data.
--VV reports the version of ncurses which was used in this program, and
exits.
--vv _n prints out tracing information on standard error as the program
runs.
The optional parameter _n is a number from 1 to 10, inclusive,
indicating the desired level of detail of information. If ncurses
is built without tracing support, the optional parameter is ignored.
--WW By itself, the --ww option will not force long strings to be wrapped.
Use the --WW option to do this.
--ww _w_i_d_t_h
changes the output to _w_i_d_t_h characters.
--xx print information for user-defined capabilities (see uusseerr__ccaappss((55)).
These are extensions to the terminfo repertoire which can be loaded
using the --xx option of ttiicc.
FFIILLEESS #
/usr/share/terminfo Compiled terminal description database.
HHIISSTTOORRYY #
Although System V Release 2 provided a terminfo library, it had no
documented tool for decompiling the terminal descriptions. Tony Hansen
(AT&T) wrote the first iinnffooccmmpp in early 1984, for System V Release 3.
Eric Raymond used the AT&T documentation in 1995 to provide an equivalent
iinnffooccmmpp for ncurses. In addition, he added a few new features such as:
• the --ee option, to support _f_a_l_l_b_a_c_k (compiled-in) terminal
descriptions
• the --ii option, to help with analysis
Later, Thomas Dickey added the --xx (user-defined capabilities) option, and
the --EE option to support fallback entries with user-defined capabilities.
For a complete list, see the _E_X_T_E_N_S_I_O_N_S section.
In 2010, Roy Marples provided an iinnffooccmmpp program for NetBSD. It is less
capable than the SVr4 or ncurses versions (e.g., it lacks the sorting
options documented in X/Open), but does include the --xx option adapted
from ncurses.
PPOORRTTAABBIILLIITTYY #
X/Open Curses, Issue 7 (2009) provides a description of iinnffooccmmpp. It does
not mention the options used for converting to termcap format.
EEXXTTEENNSSIIOONNSS #
The --00, --11, --EE, --FF, --GG, --QQ, --RR, --TT, --VV, --aa, --ee, --ff, --gg, --ii, --ll, --pp, --qq
and --tt options are not supported in SVr4 curses.
SVr4 infocmp does not distinguish between absent and cancelled
capabilities. Also, it shows missing integer capabilities as --11 (the
internal value used to represent missing integers). This implementation
shows those as “NULL”, for consistency with missing strings.
The --rr 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 --rr --RRBBSSDD.
BBUUGGSS #
The --FF option of iinnffooccmmpp(1) should be a ttooee(1) mode.
SSEEEE AALLSSOO #
ccaappttooiinnffoo(1), iinnffoottooccaapp(1), ttiicc(1), ttooee(1), ccuurrsseess(3), tteerrmmiinnffoo(5).
uusseerr__ccaappss(5).
https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tctest.html
This describes nnccuurrsseess version 6.4 (patch 20230826).
AAUUTTHHOORR #
Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> and
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
ncurses 6.4 2023-08-19 infocmp(1)