Provided by: ncurses-bin_6.4+20230625-2_amd64 bug

NAME

       tic - the terminfo entry-description compiler

SYNOPSIS

       tic [-01CDGIKLNTUVWacfgqrstx] [-e names] [-o dir] [-Q[n]] [-R subset] [-v[n]] [-w[n]] file

DESCRIPTION

       The  tic  command translates a terminfo file from source format into compiled 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 entry).  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/terminfo, 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 container if it does
       not exist.  For a directory, this would be the “terminfo”  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 environment to a valid database location.

       •   Secondly, if tic cannot write in /etc/terminfo or the location  specified  using  your
           TERMINFO  variable,  it  looks  for  the directory $HOME/.terminfo (or hashed database
           $HOME/.terminfo.db); if that location 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 (no default value), and

       •   the system terminfo database (/etc/terminfo).

   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  discarding them.
              Capabilities are commented by prefixing them with  a  period.   This  sets  the  -x
              option,  because it treats the commented-out entries as user-defined names.  If the
              source is termcap, accept the 2-character names required by version  6.   Otherwise
              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 report cases where the
              terminfo values do not have an exact equivalent in termcap form.  For example:

              •   sgr usually will not convert, because termcap lacks the ability  to  work  with
                  more   than   two   parameters,   and   because   termcap  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 problems and bad use-
              links.  If you specify -C (-I) with this option, the code will print warnings about
              entries  which, after use resolution, are more than 1023 (4096) bytes long.  Due to
              a fixed buffer length in older termcap libraries, as well as buggy checking 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 parameters 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 names
              Limit writes and translations to the following comma-separated list  of  terminals.
              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 option 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 character 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_backspace,  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 compiled (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 capabilities) 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 compiled.

       -T     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).

       -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, indicating the desired
            level of detail of information.

            •   If ncurses is built without tracing support, the optional parameter 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 information) 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  recognize, it will infer its type
            (boolean, number or string) from the syntax and make  an  extended  table  entry  for
            that.   User-defined  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 duplicates the capabilities in entry-name  for  the  current
       entry, with the exception 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  entry_name_1 before use= for these
       capabilities to be canceled in entry_name_1.

       Total compiled entries cannot exceed 4096 bytes.  The name field cannot 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.

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 cancelled capabilities.

       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 warning 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 development 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 capabilities.

       In  2010,  Roy  Marples  provided  a  tic  program  and terminfo library for NetBSD.  That
       implementation adapts several features from ncurses, including 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.

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 True64 UNIX.  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 option.  The NetBSD tic program follows X/Open's
       documentation, omitting the -v option.

       The X/Open rationale states that some implementations of tic  read  terminal  descriptions
       from  the  standard input if the file parameter is omitted.  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.

   COMPATIBILITY
       There  is  some evidence that historic tic implementations treated description fields with
       no whitespace in them as additional aliases or short names.  This tic does  not  do  that,
       but  it  does  warn  when  description  fields  may be treated that way and check them for
       dangerous characters.

   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  capabilities.   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 entries.

       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.

FILES

       /etc/terminfo/?/*
            Compiled terminal description database.

SEE ALSO

       captoinfo(1), infocmp(1), infotocap(1), toe(1), ncurses(3NCURSES), term(5).   terminfo(5).
       user_caps(5).

       This describes ncurses version 6.4 (patch 20230625).

AUTHOR

       Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> and
       Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>