terminfo.4 (2010 09)

t
terminfo(4) terminfo(4)
(ENHANCED CURSES)
shows the format of a terminfo source file:
alias1 | alias2 | ... | aliasn | longname,
whitespace am, lines #24,
whitespace 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 conven-
tions established by implementation-specific terminfo compilation utilities. Implementations will
recognize alias names consisting only of characters from the portable file name 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 dev-
ices.
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 capa-
bilities, listed under the Strings section in the following tables, have names beginning with key_.
These capabilities are defined in <term.h>.
Minimum Guaranteed Limits
All X/Open-compliant implementations support at least the following limits for the terminfo source file:
Minimum Guaranteed
Value
Source File Characteristic
Length of a line 1023 bytes
Length of a terminal alias 14 bytes
Length of a terminal model name 128 bytes
Width of a single field 128 bytes
Length of a string value 1000 bytes
Length of a string representing a numeric value 99 digits
0 to 32767 inclusiveMagnitude of a numeric value
An implementation may support higher limits than those specified above.
Formal Grammar
The grammar and lexical conventions in this section together describe the syntax for terminfo terminal
descriptions within a terminfo source file. A terminal description that satisfies the requirements of this
section will be accepted by all implementations. (The notation "(n)" refers to a note following the descrip-
tion.)
descriptions : START_OF_HEADER_LINE (1) rest_of_header_line feature_lines
| descriptions START_OF_HEADER_LINE rest_of_header_line
| feature_lines
;
rest_of_header_line : PIPE LONGNAME COMMA NEWLINE
| aliases PIPE LONGNAME COMMA NEWLINE
;
feature_lines : start_feature_line rest_of_feature_line
| feature_lines start_feature_line rest_of_feature_line
;
2 Hewlett-Packard Company − 2 − HP-UX 11i Version 3: September 2010