NAME

     ul — do underlining

SYNOPSIS

     ul [-i] [-t terminal] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION

     The ul utility reads the named files (or standard input if none are given) and translates occurrences of
     underscores to the sequence which indicates underlining for the terminal in use, as specified by the
     environment variable TERM.  The file /etc/termcap is read to determine the appropriate sequences for
     underlining.  If the terminal is incapable of underlining, but is capable of a standout mode then that is
     used instead.  If the terminal can overstrike, or handles underlining automatically, ul degenerates to
     cat(1).  If the terminal cannot underline, underlining is ignored.  During the translation some other
     special characters also get translated.  E.g. TAB gets expanded to spaces.

     The following options are available:

     -i      Underlining is indicated by a separate line containing appropriate dashes ‘-’; this is useful when
             you want to look at the underlining which is present in an nroff(1) output stream on a CRT-
             terminal.

     -t terminal
             Overrides the terminal type specified in the environment with terminal.

ENVIRONMENT

     The LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and TERM environment variables affect the execution of ul as described in
     environ(7).

EXIT STATUS

     The ul utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

SEE ALSO

     colcrt(1), man(1), nroff(1)

HISTORY

     The ul command appeared in 3.0BSD.

BUGS

     The nroff(1) command usually outputs a series of backspaces and underlines intermixed with the text to
     indicate underlining.  No attempt is made to optimize the backward motion.