Technical Notes

Manpages - toe.1m

NAME

toe - table of (terminfo) entries

SYNOPSIS

toe [*-v*[/n/]] [*-ahsuUV*] fileā€¦\\

DESCRIPTION

With no options, toe lists all available terminal types by primary name with descriptions. File arguments specify the directories to be scanned; if no such arguments are given, your default terminfo directory is scanned. If you also specify the -h option, a directory header will be issued as each directory is entered.

There are other options intended for use by terminfo file maintainers:

-a
report on all of the terminal databases which ncurses would search, rather than only the first one that it finds. If the -s is also given, toe adds a column to the report, showing (like conflict*(1)) which entries which belong to a given terminal database. An "" marks entries which differ, and "+" marks equivalent entries. Without the -s option, toe does not attempt to merge duplicates in its report
-s
sort the output by the entry names.
-u file
says to write a report to the standard output, listing dependencies in the given terminfo/termcap source file. The report condenses the use relation: each line consists of the primary name of a terminal that has use capabilities, followed by a colon, followed by the whitespace-separated primary names of all terminals which occur in those use capabilities, followed by a newline
-U file
says to write a report to the standard output, listing reverse dependencies in the given terminfo/termcap source file. The report reverses the use relation: each line consists of the primary name of a terminal that occurs in use capabilities, followed by a colon, followed by the whitespace-separated primary names of all terminals which depend on it, followed by a newline.
*-v*/n/
specifies that (verbose) output be written to standard error, showing toe's progress. The optional parameter n is a number from 1 to 10, interpreted as for *tic*(1M). If ncurses is built without tracing support, the optional parameter is ignored.
-V
reports the version of ncurses which was used in this program, and exits.

EXAMPLES

Without sorting, the -a option reports all of the names found in all of the terminal databases found by the TERMINFO and TERMINFO_DIRS environment variables:

MtxOrb162 	16x2 Matrix Orbital LCD display
MtxOrb204 	20x4 Matrix Orbital LCD display
MtxOrb    	Generic Matrix Orbital LCD display
qvt101+   	qume qvt 101 PLUS product
qvt119+-25	QVT 119 PLUS with 25 data lines
qansi-g   	QNX ANSI
qvt103    	qume qvt 103
qnxw      	QNX4 windows
qansi-w   	QNX ansi for windows
qnxm      	QNX4 with mouse events
qvt203-25-w	QVT 203 PLUS with 25 by 132 columns
qansi-t   	QNX ansi without console writes
. . .

Use the -a and -s options together to show where each terminal description was found:

--> /usr/local/ncurses/share/terminfo
----> /usr/share/terminfo
*-+-:	9term     	Plan9 terminal emulator for X
*---:	Eterm     	Eterm with xterm-style color support (X Window System)
*-*-:	Eterm-256color	Eterm with xterm 256-colors
*-*-:	Eterm-88color	Eterm with 88 colors
*-+-:	MtxOrb    	Generic Matrix Orbital LCD display
*-+-:	MtxOrb162 	16x2 Matrix Orbital LCD display
*-+-:	MtxOrb204 	20x4 Matrix Orbital LCD display
*-*-:	NCR260VT300WPP	NCR 2900_260 vt300 wide mode pc+  kybd
*-+-:	aaa       	ann arbor ambassador/30 lines
*-+-:	aaa+dec   	ann arbor ambassador in dec vt100 mode
*-+-:	aaa+rv    	ann arbor ambassador in reverse video
. . .

FILES

nix/store/53iigsmf32bwkfdhhihq2rppgk23k2rg-ncurses-6.4.20221231/share/terminfo?/*
Compiled terminal description database.

HISTORY

This utility is not provided by other implementations. There is no relevant X/Open or POSIX standard for toe.

The program name refers to a developer's pun:

  • tic,
  • tac (now tack),
  • toe.

It replaced a -T option which was briefly supported by the ncurses infocmp utility in 1995.

The -a and -s options were added to toe several years later (2006 and 2011, respectively).

SEE ALSO

*captoinfo*(1M), *infocmp*(1M), *infotocap*(1M), *tic*(1M), *curses*(3X), *terminfo*(5).

This describes ncurses version 6.4 (patch 20221231).