Provided by: ncurses-bin_5.9+20140118-1ubuntu1_amd64 bug

NAME

       tic - the terminfo entry-description compiler

SYNOPSIS

       tic [-01CDGIKLNTUVacfgrstx] [-e names] [-o dir] [-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).

   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.

       -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.

       -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.

       -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 10,
            inclusive, indicating the desired level of detail of information.  If n  is  omitted,
            the default level is 1.  If n is specified and greater than 1, the level of detail is
            increased.

            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

            5      String-table memory allocations

            7      Entries into the string-table

            8      List of tokens encountered by scanner

            9      All values computed in construction of the hash table

            If the debug level n is not given, it is taken to be one.

       -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.  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.

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.

       The  -0, -1, -C, -G, -I, -N, -R, -T, -V, -a, -e, -f, -g, -o, -r, -s, -t and -x options are
       not supported under SVr4.  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

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

       This describes ncurses version 5.9 (patch 20140118).

AUTHOR

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

                                                                                           tic(1)