tic(1) User commands tic(1)
NAME
tic - compile terminal descriptions for terminfo or termcap
SYNOPSIS
tic [-01acCDfgGIKLNqrstTUVWx] [-e terminal-type-list] [-o dir] [-Q[n]]
[-R subset] [-v[n]] [-w[n]] file
DESCRIPTION
The tic command translates a terminfo file from source format into com-
piled format. The compiled format is necessary for use with the library
routines in ncurses(3NCURSES).
As described in term(5), the database may be either a directory tree
(one file per terminal entry) or a hashed database (one record per en-
try). The tic command writes only one type of entry, depending on how
it was built:
• For directory trees, the top-level directory, e.g., /usr/share/ter-
minfo, specifies the location of the database.
• For hashed databases, a filename is needed. If the given file is
not found by that name, but can be found by adding the suffix ".db",
then that is used.
The default name for the hashed database is the same as the default
directory name (only adding a ".db" suffix).
In either case (directory or hashed database), tic will create the con-
tainer if it does not exist. For a directory, this would be the “ter-
minfo” leaf, versus a "terminfo.db" file.
The results are normally placed in the system terminfo database
/etc/terminfo. The compiled terminal description can be placed in a
different terminfo database. There are two ways to achieve this:
• First, you may override the system default either by using the -o
option, or by setting the variable TERMINFO in your shell environ-
ment to a valid database location.
• Secondly, if tic cannot write in /etc/terminfo or the location spec-
ified using your TERMINFO variable, it looks for the directory
$HOME/.terminfo (or hashed database $HOME/.terminfo.db); if that lo-
cation exists, the entry is placed there.
Libraries that read terminfo entries are expected to check in succession
• a location specified with the TERMINFO environment variable,
• $HOME/.terminfo,
• directories listed in the TERMINFO_DIRS environment variable,
• a compiled-in list of directories (/etc/terminfo:/lib/ter-
minfo:/usr/share/terminfo), and
• the system terminfo database (/etc/terminfo).
The Fetching Compiled Descriptions section in the terminfo(5) manual
goes into further detail.
Aliases
This is the same program as infotocap and captoinfo; usually those are
linked to, or copied from this program:
• When invoked as infotocap, tic sets the -I option.
• When invoked as captoinfo, tic sets the -C option.
OPTIONS
-0 restricts the output to a single line
-1 restricts the output to a single column
-a tells tic to retain commented-out capabilities rather than dis-
carding them. Capabilities are commented by prefixing them with
a period. This sets the -x option, because it treats the com-
mented-out entries as user-defined names. If the source is term-
cap, accept the 2-character names required by version 6. Other-
wise these are ignored.
-C Force source translation to termcap format. Note: this differs
from the -C option of infocmp(1) in that it does not merely
translate capability names, but also translates terminfo strings
to termcap format. Capabilities that are not translatable are
left in the entry under their terminfo names but commented out
with two preceding dots. The actual format used incorporates
some improvements for escaped characters from terminfo format.
For a stricter BSD-compatible translation, add the -K option.
If this is combined with -c, tic makes additional checks to re-
port cases where the terminfo values do not have an exact equiva-
lent in termcap form. For example:
• sgr usually will not convert, because termcap lacks the abil-
ity to work with more than two parameters, and because term-
cap lacks many of the arithmetic/logical operators used in
terminfo.
• capabilities with more than one delay or with delays before
the end of the string will not convert completely.
-c tells tic to only check file for errors, including syntax prob-
lems and bad use-links. If you specify -C (-I) with this option,
the code will print warnings about entries which, after use reso-
lution, are more than 1023 (4096) bytes long. Due to a fixed
buffer length in older termcap libraries, as well as buggy check-
ing for the buffer length (and a documented limit in terminfo),
these entries may cause core dumps with other implementations.
tic checks string capabilities to ensure that those with parame-
ters will be valid expressions. It does this check only for the
predefined string capabilities; those which are defined with the
-x option are ignored.
-D tells tic to print the database locations that it knows about,
and exit. The first location shown is the one to which it would
write compiled terminal descriptions. If tic is not able to find
a writable database location according to the rules summarized
above, it will print a diagnostic and exit with an error rather
than printing a list of database locations.
-e list
Limit writes and translations to the comma-separated list of ter-
minal types. If any name or alias of a terminal matches one of
the names in the list, the entry will be written or translated as
normal. Otherwise no output will be generated for it. The op-
tion value is interpreted as a file containing the list if it
contains a '/'. (Note: depending on how tic was compiled, this
option may require -I or -C.)
-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 char-
acter equivalents.
-g Display constant character literals in quoted form rather than
their decimal equivalents.
-I Force source translation to terminfo format.
-K Suppress some longstanding ncurses extensions to termcap format,
e.g., "\s" for space.
-L Force source translation to terminfo format using the long C
variable names listed in <term.h>
-N Disable smart defaults. Normally, when translating from termcap
to terminfo, the compiler makes a number of assumptions about the
defaults of string capabilities reset1_string, carriage_return,
cursor_left, cursor_down, scroll_forward, tab, newline, key_back-
space, key_left, and key_down, then attempts to use obsolete
termcap capabilities to deduce correct values. It also normally
suppresses output of obsolete termcap capabilities such as bs.
This option forces a more literal translation that also preserves
the obsolete capabilities.
-odir Write compiled entries to given database location. Overrides the
TERMINFO environment variable.
-Qn Rather than show source in terminfo (text) format, print the com-
piled (binary) format in hexadecimal or base64 form, depending on
the option's value:
1 hexadecimal
2 base64
3 hexadecimal and base64
-q Suppress comments and blank lines when showing translated source.
-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
outright broken ports like AIX 3.x that have their own extensions
incompatible with SVr4/XSI.
Available subsets are
“SVr1”, “Ultrix”, “HP”, “BSD”, and “AIX”
See terminfo(5) for details.
-r Force entry resolution (so there are no remaining tc capabili-
ties) even when doing translation to termcap format. This may be
needed if you are preparing a termcap file for a termcap library
(such as GNU termcap through version 1.3 or BSD termcap through
4.3BSD) that does not handle multiple tc capabilities per entry.
-s Summarize the compile by showing the database location into which
entries are written, and the number of entries which are com-
piled.
-T eliminates size-restrictions on the generated text. This is
mainly useful for testing and analysis, since the compiled de-
scriptions are limited (e.g., 1023 for termcap, 4096 for ter-
minfo).
-t tells tic to discard commented-out capabilities. Normally when
translating from terminfo to termcap, untranslatable capabilities
are commented-out.
-U tells tic to not post-process the data after parsing the source
file. Normally, it infers data which is commonly missing in
older terminfo data, or in termcaps.
-V reports the version of ncurses which was used in this program,
and exits.
-vn specifies that (verbose) output be written to standard error
trace information showing tic's progress.
The optional parameter n is a number from 1 to 9, inclusive, in-
dicating the desired level of detail of information.
• If ncurses is built without tracing support, the optional pa-
rameter is ignored.
• If n is omitted, the default level is 1.
• If n is specified and greater than 1, the level of detail is
increased, and the output is written (with tracing informa-
tion) to the “trace” file.
The debug flag levels are as follows:
1 Names of files created and linked
2 Information related to the “use” facility
3 Statistics from the hashing algorithm
4 Details of extended capabilities
5 (unused)
6 (unused)
7 Entries into the string-table
8 List of tokens encountered by scanner
9 All values computed in construction of the hash table
-W By itself, the -w option will not force long strings to be
wrapped. Use the -W option to do this.
If you specify both -f and -W options, the latter is ignored when
-f has already split the line.
-wn specifies the width of the output. The parameter is optional.
If it is omitted, it defaults to 60.
-x Treat unknown capabilities as user-defined (see user_caps(5)).
That is, if you supply a capability name which tic does not rec-
ognize, it will infer its type (Boolean, number or string) from
the syntax and make an extended table entry for that. User-de-
fined capability strings whose name begins with “k” are treated
as function keys.
Parameters
file contains one or more terminfo terminal descriptions in source
format [see terminfo(5)]. Each description in the file describes
the capabilities of a particular terminal.
If file is “-”, then the data is read from the standard input.
The file parameter may also be the path of a character-device.
Processing
All but one of the capabilities recognized by tic are documented in
terminfo(5). The exception is the use capability.
When a use=entry-name field is discovered in a terminal entry currently
being compiled, tic reads in the binary from /etc/terminfo to complete
the entry. (Entries created from file will be used first. tic dupli-
cates the capabilities in entry-name for the current entry, with the ex-
ception of those capabilities that explicitly are defined in the current
entry.
When an entry, e.g., entry_name_1, contains a use=entry_name_2 field,
any canceled capabilities in entry_name_2 must also appear in en-
try_name_1 before use= for these capabilities to be canceled in en-
try_name_1.
Total compiled entries cannot exceed 4096 bytes in the legacy storage
format, or 32768 using the extended number format. The name field can-
not exceed 512 bytes. Terminal names exceeding the maximum alias length
(32 characters on systems with long filenames, 14 characters otherwise)
will be truncated to the maximum alias length and a warning message will
be printed.
FILES
/etc/terminfo
compiled terminal description database
NOTES
There is some evidence that historic tic implementations treated de-
scription fields with no whitespace in them as additional aliases or
short names. This tic does not do that, but it does warn when descrip-
tion fields may be treated that way and check them for dangerous charac-
ters.
EXTENSIONS
Unlike the SVr4 tic command, this implementation can actually compile
termcap sources. In fact, entries in terminfo and termcap syntax can be
mixed in a single source file. See terminfo(5) for the list of termcap
names taken to be equivalent to terminfo names.
The SVr4 manual pages are not clear on the resolution rules for use ca-
pabilities. This implementation of tic will find use targets anywhere
in the source file, or anywhere in the file tree rooted at TERMINFO (if
TERMINFO is defined), or in the user's $HOME/.terminfo database (if it
exists), or (finally) anywhere in the system's file tree of compiled en-
tries.
The error messages from this tic have the same format as GNU C error
messages, and can be parsed by GNU Emacs's compile facility.
Aside from -c and -v, options are not portable:
• Most of tic's options are not supported by SVr4 tic:
-0 -1 -C -G -I -N -R -T -V -a -e -f -g -o -r -s -t -x
• The NetBSD tic supports a few of the ncurses options
-a -o -x
and adds -S (a feature which does the same thing as infocmp's -e and
-E options).
The SVr4 -c mode does not report bad “use=” links.
System V does not compile entries to or read entries from your
$HOME/.terminfo database unless TERMINFO is explicitly set to it.
PORTABILITY
X/Open Curses Issue 7 (2009) provides a brief description of tic. It
lists one option: -c. The omission of -v is unexpected. The change
history states that the description is derived from Tru64. According to
its manual pages, that system also supported the -v option.
Shortly after Issue 7 was released, Tru64 was discontinued. As of 2019,
the surviving implementations of tic are SVr4 (AIX, HP-UX and Solaris),
ncurses and NetBSD curses. The SVr4 tic programs all support the -v op-
tion. The NetBSD tic program follows X/Open's documentation, omitting
the -v option.
The X/Open rationale states that some implementations of tic read termi-
nal descriptions from the standard input if the file parameter is omit-
ted. None of these implementations do that. Further, it comments that
some may choose to read from ”./terminfo.src” but that is obsolescent
behavior from SVr2, and is not (for example) a documented feature of
SVr3.
HISTORY
System V Release 2 provided a tic utility. It accepted a single option:
-v (optionally followed by a number). According to Ross Ridge's comment
in mytinfo, this version of tic was unable to represent canceled capa-
bilities.
System V Release 3 provided a different tic utility, written by Pavel
Curtis, (originally named “compile” in pcurses). This added an option
-c to check the file for errors, with the caveat that errors in “use=”
links would not be reported. System V Release 3 documented a few warn-
ing messages which did not appear in pcurses. While the program itself
was changed little as development continued with System V Release 4, the
table of capabilities grew from 180 (pcurses) to 464 (Solaris).
In early development of ncurses (1993), Zeyd Ben-Halim used the table
from mytinfo to extend the pcurses table to 469 capabilities (456
matched SVr4, 8 were only in SVr4, 13 were not in SVr4). Of those 13,
11 were ultimately discarded (perhaps to match the draft of X/Open
Curses). The exceptions were memory_lock_above and memory_unlock (see
user_caps(5)).
Eric Raymond incorporated parts of mytinfo into ncurses to implement the
termcap-to-terminfo source conversion, and extended that to begin devel-
opment of the corresponding terminfo-to-termcap source conversion,
Thomas Dickey completed that development over the course of several
years.
In 1999, Thomas Dickey added the -x option to support user-defined capa-
bilities.
In 2010, Roy Marples provided a tic program and terminfo library for
NetBSD. That implementation adapts several features from ncurses, in-
cluding tic's -x option.
The -c option tells tic to check for problems in the terminfo source
file. Continued development provides additional checks:
• pcurses had 8 warnings
• ncurses in 1996 had 16 warnings
• Solaris (SVr4) curses has 28 warnings
• NetBSD tic in 2019 has 19 warnings.
• ncurses in 2019 has 96 warnings
The checking done in ncurses' tic helps with the conversion to termcap,
as well as pointing out errors and inconsistencies. It is also used to
ensure consistency with the user-defined capabilities. There are 527
distinct capabilities in ncurses' terminal database; 128 of those are
user-defined.
AUTHORS
Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> and
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
SEE ALSO
captoinfo(1), infocmp(1), infotocap(1), toe(1), ncurses(3NCURSES),
term(5), terminfo(5), user_caps(5)
ncurses 6.5 2025-01-18 tic(1)
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