What is terminfo?

terminfo refers to both of the following:

• It is a group of routines within the curses library that handles certain terminal capabilities. You can use these terminfo routines to write a filter or program the function keys, if your terminal has programmable keys. Shell programmers can use the command tput(1) to perform many of the manipulations provided by these routines.

• It is a database containing the descriptions of many terminals that can be used with curses programs. These descriptions specify the capabilities of a terminal and the way it performs various operations--for example, how many lines and columns it has and how its control characters are interpreted.

  Each terminal description in the database is a separate, compiled file. You use the source code that oldterminfo(4) describes to create these files and the command tic(1M) to compile them.

  The compiled files are normally located in the directories /usr/share/lib/terminfo/?. These directories have single character names, each of which is the first character in the name of a terminal. For example, an entry for the AT&T Teletype 5425 is normally located in the file /usr/share/lib/terminfo/a/att5425.

Here is a simple shell script that uses the terminfo database.

   #   Clear the screen and show the 0,0 position.
   

   tput clear
   tput cup 0 0       #   or tput home
   echo "<- this is 0 0"
   

   #   Show line 5, column 10.
   

   tput cup 5 10
   echo "<- this is 5 10"

A shell script using terminfo routines