Source File Syntax

Source files can use the ISO 8859-1 codeset. The behavior when the source file is in another codeset is unspecified. Traditional practice has been to translate information from other codesets into the source file syntax.

terminfo source files consist of one or more device descriptions. Each description defines a mnemonic name for the terminal model. Each description consists of a header (beginning in column 1) and one or more lines that list the features for that particular device. Every line in a terminfo source file must end in a comma. Every line in a terminfo source file except the header must be indented with one or more white spaces (either spaces or tabs).

Entries in terminfo source files consist of a number of comma-separated fields. White space after each comma is ignored. Embedded commas must be escaped by using a backslash. The following example shows the format of a terminfo source file:

alias1 | alias2 | ... | aliasn | longname,
<white space> am, lines #24,
<white space> home=\Eeh,

The first line, commonly referred to as the header line, must begin in column one and must contain at least two aliases separated by vertical bars. The last field in the header line must be the long name of the device and it may contain any string.

Alias names must be unique in the terminfo database and they must conform to file naming conventions established by implementation-specific terminfo compilation utilities. Implementations will recognize alias names consisting only of characters from the portable filename character set except that implementations need not accept a first character of minus(-). For example, a typical restriction is that they cannot contain white space or slashes. There may be further constraints imposed on source file values by the implementation-specific terminfo compilation utilities.

Each capability in terminfo is of one of the following types:

Boolean capabilities show that a device has or does not have a particular feature.
Numeric capabilities quantify particular features of a device.
String capabilities provide sequences that can be used to perform particular operations on devices.

Capability names adhere to an informal length limit of five characters. Whenever possible, capability names are chosen to be the same as or similar to those specified by the ANSI X3.64-1979 standard. Semantics are also intended to match those of the ANSI standard.

All string capabilities may have padding specified, with the exception of those used for input. Input capabilities, listed under the Strings section in the following tables, have names beginning with key_. These capabilities are defined in <term.h>.