tput
tput(1) General Commands Manual tput(1)
NAME
tput, reset - initialize a terminal or query terminfo database
SYNOPSIS
tput [-Ttype] capname [parameters]
tput [-Ttype] [-x] clear
tput [-Ttype] init
tput [-Ttype] reset
tput [-Ttype] longname
tput -S <<
tput -V
DESCRIPTION
The tput utility uses the terminfo database to make the values of ter-
minal-dependent capabilities and information available to the shell
(see sh(1)), to initialize or reset the terminal, or return the long
name of the requested terminal type. The result depends upon the capa-
bility's type:
string
tput writes the string to the standard output. No trailing
newline is supplied.
integer
tput writes the decimal value to the standard output, with a
trailing newline.
boolean
tput simply sets the exit code (0 for TRUE if the terminal has
the capability, 1 for FALSE if it does not), and writes nothing
to the standard output.
Before using a value returned on the standard output, the application
should test the exit code (e.g., $?, see sh(1)) to be sure it is 0.
(See the EXIT CODES and DIAGNOSTICS sections.) For a complete list of
capabilities and the capname associated with each, see terminfo(5).
Options
-S allows more than one capability per invocation of tput. The ca-
pabilities must be passed to tput from the standard input in-
stead of from the command line (see example). Only one capname
is allowed per line. The -S option changes the meaning of the 0
and 1 boolean and string exit codes (see the EXIT CODES sec-
tion).
Because some capabilities may use string parameters rather than
numbers, tput uses a table and the presence of parameters in its
input to decide whether to use tparm(3X), and how to interpret
the parameters.
-Ttype indicates the type of terminal. Normally this option is unnec-
essary, because the default is taken from the environment vari-
able TERM. If -T is specified, then the shell variables LINES
and COLUMNS will also be ignored.
-V reports the version of ncurses which was used in this program,
and exits.
-x do not attempt to clear the terminal's scrollback buffer using
the extended "E3" capability.
Commands
A few commands (init, reset and longname) are special; they are defined
by the tput program. The others are the names of capabilities from the
terminal database (see terminfo(5) for a list). Although init and re-
set resemble capability names, tput uses several capabilities to per-
form these special functions.
capname
indicates the capability from the terminal database.
If the capability is a string that takes parameters, the argu-
ments following the capability will be used as parameters for
the string.
Most parameters are numbers. Only a few terminal capabilities
require string parameters; tput uses a table to decide which to
pass as strings. Normally tput uses tparm(3X) to perform the
substitution. If no parameters are given for the capability,
tput writes the string without performing the substitution.
init If the terminal database is present and an entry for the user's
terminal exists (see -Ttype, above), the following will occur:
(1) first, tput retrieves the current terminal mode settings
for your terminal. It does this by successively testing
o the standard error,
o standard output,
o standard input and
o ultimately "/dev/tty"
to obtain terminal settings. Having retrieved these set-
tings, tput remembers which file descriptor to use when up-
dating settings.
(2) if the window size cannot be obtained from the operating
system, but the terminal description (or environment, e.g.,
LINES and COLUMNS variables specify this), update the oper-
ating system's notion of the window size.
(3) the terminal modes will be updated:
o any delays (e.g., newline) specified in the entry will
be set in the tty driver,
o tabs expansion will be turned on or off according to
the specification in the entry, and
o if tabs are not expanded, standard tabs will be set
(every 8 spaces).
(4) if present, the terminal's initialization strings will be
output as detailed in the terminfo(5) section on Tabs and
Initialization,
(5) output is flushed.
If an entry does not contain the information needed for any of
these activities, that activity will silently be skipped.
reset This is similar to init, with two differences:
(1) before any other initialization, the terminal modes will be
reset to a "sane" state:
o set cooked and echo modes,
o turn off cbreak and raw modes,
o turn on newline translation and
o reset any unset special characters to their default
values
(2) Instead of putting out initialization strings, the termi-
nal's reset strings will be output if present (rs1, rs2,
rs3, rf). If the reset strings are not present, but ini-
tialization strings are, the initialization strings will be
output.
Otherwise, reset acts identically to init.
longname
If the terminal database is present and an entry for the user's
terminal exists (see -Ttype above), then the long name of the
terminal will be put out. The long name is the last name in the
first line of the terminal's description in the terminfo data-
base [see term(5)].
Aliases
tput handles the clear, init and reset commands specially: it allows
for the possibility that it is invoked by a link with those names.
If tput is invoked by a link named reset, this has the same effect as
tput reset. The tset(1) utility also treats a link named reset spe-
cially.
Before ncurses 6.1, the two utilities were different from each other:
o tset utility reset the terminal modes and special characters (not
done with tput).
o On the other hand, tset's repertoire of terminal capabilities for
resetting the terminal was more limited, i.e., only reset_1string,
reset_2string and reset_file in contrast to the tab-stops and mar-
gins which are set by this utility.
o The reset program is usually an alias for tset, because of this
difference with resetting terminal modes and special characters.
With the changes made for ncurses 6.1, the reset feature of the two
programs is (mostly) the same. A few differences remain:
o The tset program waits one second when resetting, in case it hap-
pens to be a hardware terminal.
o The two programs write the terminal initialization strings to dif-
ferent streams (i.e., the standard error for tset and the standard
output for tput).
Note: although these programs write to different streams, redirect-
ing their output to a file will capture only part of their actions.
The changes to the terminal modes are not affected by redirecting
the output.
If tput is invoked by a link named init, this has the same effect as
tput init. Again, you are less likely to use that link because another
program named init has a more well-established use.
Terminal Size
Besides the special commands (e.g., clear), tput treats certain ter-
minfo capabilities specially: lines and columns. tput calls se-
tupterm(3X) to obtain the terminal size:
o first, it gets the size from the terminal database (which generally
is not provided for terminal emulators which do not have a fixed
window size)
o then it asks the operating system for the terminal's size (which
generally works, unless connecting via a serial line which does not
support NAWS: negotiations about window size).
o finally, it inspects the environment variables LINES and COLUMNS
which may override the terminal size.
If the -T option is given tput ignores the environment variables by
calling use_tioctl(TRUE), relying upon the operating system (or fi-
nally, the terminal database).
EXAMPLES
tput init
Initialize the terminal according to the type of terminal in the
environmental variable TERM. This command should be included in
everyone's .profile after the environmental variable TERM has been
exported, as illustrated on the profile(5) manual page.
tput -T5620 reset
Reset an AT&T 5620 terminal, overriding the type of terminal in
the environmental variable TERM.
tput cup 0 0
Send the sequence to move the cursor to row 0, column 0 (the upper
left corner of the screen, usually known as the "home" cursor po-
sition).
tput clear
Echo the clear-screen sequence for the current terminal.
tput cols
Print the number of columns for the current terminal.
tput -T450 cols
Print the number of columns for the 450 terminal.
bold=`tput smso` offbold=`tput rmso`
Set the shell variables bold, to begin stand-out mode sequence,
and offbold, to end standout mode sequence, for the current termi-
nal. This might be followed by a prompt: echo "${bold}Please type
in your name: ${offbold}\c"
tput hc
Set exit code to indicate if the current terminal is a hard copy
terminal.
tput cup 23 4
Send the sequence to move the cursor to row 23, column 4.
tput cup
Send the terminfo string for cursor-movement, with no parameters
substituted.
tput longname
Print the long name from the terminfo database for the type of
terminal specified in the environmental variable TERM.
tput -S <<!
> clear
> cup 10 10
> bold
> !
This example shows tput processing several capabilities in one in-
vocation. It clears the screen, moves the cursor to position 10,
10 and turns on bold (extra bright) mode. The list is terminated
by an exclamation mark (!) on a line by itself.
FILES
/etc/terminfo
compiled terminal description database
/usr/share/tabset/*
tab settings for some terminals, in a format appropriate to be
output to the terminal (escape sequences that set margins and
tabs); for more information, see the Tabs and Initialization,
section of terminfo(5)
EXIT CODES
If the -S option is used, tput checks for errors from each line, and if
any errors are found, will set the exit code to 4 plus the number of
lines with errors. If no errors are found, the exit code is 0. No in-
dication of which line failed can be given so exit code 1 will never
appear. Exit codes 2, 3, and 4 retain their usual interpretation. If
the -S option is not used, the exit code depends on the type of cap-
name:
boolean
a value of 0 is set for TRUE and 1 for FALSE.
string a value of 0 is set if the capname is defined for this termi-
nal type (the value of capname is returned on standard out-
put); a value of 1 is set if capname is not defined for this
terminal type (nothing is written to standard output).
integer
a value of 0 is always set, whether or not capname is defined
for this terminal type. To determine if capname is defined
for this terminal type, the user must test the value written
to standard output. A value of -1 means that capname is not
defined for this terminal type.
other reset or init may fail to find their respective files. In
that case, the exit code is set to 4 + errno.
Any other exit code indicates an error; see the DIAGNOSTICS section.
DIAGNOSTICS
tput prints the following error messages and sets the corresponding
exit codes.
exit code error message
---------------------------------------------------------------------
0 (capname is a numeric variable that is not specified in
the terminfo(5) database for this terminal type, e.g.
tput -T450 lines and tput -T2621 xmc)
1 no error message is printed, see the EXIT CODES section.
2 usage error
3 unknown terminal type or no terminfo database
4 unknown terminfo capability capname
>4 error occurred in -S
---------------------------------------------------------------------
HISTORY
The tput command was begun by Bill Joy in 1980. The initial version
only cleared the screen.
AT&T System V provided a different tput command, whose init and reset
subcommands (more than half the program) were incorporated from the re-
set feature of BSD tset written by Eric Allman.
Keith Bostic replaced the BSD tput command in 1989 with a new implemen-
tation based on the AT&T System V program tput. Like the AT&T program,
Bostic's version accepted some parameters named for terminfo capabili-
ties (clear, init, longname and reset). However (because he had only
termcap available), it accepted termcap names for other capabilities.
Also, Bostic's BSD tput did not modify the terminal I/O modes as the
earlier BSD tset had done.
At the same time, Bostic added a shell script named "clear", which used
tput to clear the screen.
Both of these appeared in 4.4BSD, becoming the "modern" BSD implementa-
tion of tput.
This implementation of tput began from a different source than AT&T or
BSD: Ross Ridge's mytinfo package, published on comp.sources.unix in
December 1992. Ridge's program made more sophisticated use of the ter-
minal capabilities than the BSD program. Eric Raymond used that tput
program (and other parts of mytinfo) in ncurses in June 1995. Using
the portions dealing with terminal capabilities almost without change,
Raymond made improvements to the way the command-line parameters were
handled.
PORTABILITY
This implementation of tput differs from AT&T tput in two important ar-
eas:
o tput capname writes to the standard output. That need not be a
regular terminal. However, the subcommands which manipulate termi-
nal modes may not use the standard output.
The AT&T implementation's init and reset commands use the BSD
(4.1c) tset source, which manipulates terminal modes. It succes-
sively tries standard output, standard error, standard input before
falling back to "/dev/tty" and finally just assumes a 1200Bd termi-
nal. When updating terminal modes, it ignores errors.
Until changes made after ncurses 6.0, tput did not modify terminal
modes. tput now uses a similar scheme, using functions shared with
tset (and ultimately based on the 4.4BSD tset). If it is not able
to open a terminal, e.g., when running in cron, tput will return an
error.
o AT&T tput guesses the type of its capname operands by seeing if all
of the characters are numeric, or not.
Most implementations which provide support for capname operands use
the tparm function to expand parameters in it. That function ex-
pects a mixture of numeric and string parameters, requiring tput to
know which type to use.
This implementation uses a table to determine the parameter types
for the standard capname operands, and an internal library function
to analyze nonstandard capname operands.
This implementation (unlike others) can accept both termcap and ter-
minfo names for the capname feature, if termcap support is compiled in.
However, the predefined termcap and terminfo names have two ambiguities
in this case (and the terminfo name is assumed):
o The termcap name dl corresponds to the terminfo name dl1 (delete
one line).
The terminfo name dl corresponds to the termcap name DL (delete a
given number of lines).
o The termcap name ed corresponds to the terminfo name rmdc (end
delete mode).
The terminfo name ed corresponds to the termcap name cd (clear to
end of screen).
The longname and -S options, and the parameter-substitution features
used in the cup example, were not supported in BSD curses before
4.3reno (1989) or in AT&T/USL curses before SVr4 (1988).
IEEE Std 1003.1/The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7
(POSIX.1-2008) documents only the operands for clear, init and reset.
There are a few interesting observations to make regarding that:
o In this implementation, clear is part of the capname support. The
others (init and longname) do not correspond to terminal capabili-
ties.
o Other implementations of tput on SVr4-based systems such as So-
laris, IRIX64 and HPUX as well as others such as AIX and Tru64 pro-
vide support for capname operands.
o A few platforms such as FreeBSD recognize termcap names rather than
terminfo capability names in their respective tput commands. Since
2010, NetBSD's tput uses terminfo names. Before that, it (like
FreeBSD) recognized termcap names.
Because (apparently) all of the certified Unix systems support the full
set of capability names, the reasoning for documenting only a few may
not be apparent.
o X/Open Curses Issue 7 documents tput differently, with capname and
the other features used in this implementation.
o That is, there are two standards for tput: POSIX (a subset) and
X/Open Curses (the full implementation). POSIX documents a subset
to avoid the complication of including X/Open Curses and the termi-
nal capabilities database.
o While it is certainly possible to write a tput program without us-
ing curses, none of the systems which have a curses implementation
provide a tput utility which does not provide the capname feature.
X/Open Curses Issue 7 (2009) is the first version to document utili-
ties. However that part of X/Open Curses does not follow existing
practice (i.e., Unix features documented in SVID 3):
o It assigns exit code 4 to "invalid operand", which may be the same
as unknown capability. For instance, the source code for Solaris'
xcurses uses the term "invalid" in this case.
o It assigns exit code 255 to a numeric variable that is not speci-
fied in the terminfo database. That likely is a documentation er-
ror, confusing the -1 written to the standard output for an absent
or cancelled numeric value versus an (unsigned) exit code.
The various Unix systems (AIX, HPUX, Solaris) use the same exit-codes
as ncurses.
NetBSD curses documents different exit codes which do not correspond to
either ncurses or X/Open.
SEE ALSO
clear(1), stty(1), tabs(1), tset(1), terminfo(5), termcap(3NCURSES).
This describes ncurses version 6.2 (patch 20200212).
tput(1)
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