Manual: tic

tic(1)							User commands						      tic(1)

NAME
       tic - compile terminal descriptions for terminfo or termcap

SYNOPSIS
       tic [-01acCDfgGIKLNqrstTUVWx] [-e terminal-type-list] [-o dir] [-Q[n]] [-R subset] [-v[n]] [-w[n]] file

DESCRIPTION
       tic translates a terminfo file from source format into the compiled format used by the ncurses(3NCURSES) library.

       As  described in term(5), the database may be either a directory tree (one file per terminal entry) or a hashed data‐
       base (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, such as /usr/share/terminfo, specifies the location  of  the  data‐
	   base.

       •   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
	   the process 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 by the TERMINFO environment variable,

       •   $HOME/.terminfo,

       •   directories listed in the TERMINFO_DIRS environment variable,

       •   a compiled-in list of directories (/etc/terminfo:/lib/terminfo:/usr/share/terminfo), and

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

       Section “Fetching Compiled Descriptions” in terminfo(5) goes into further detail.

   Aliases
       tic 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.	 -a implies -x, because tic treats the commented-out entries as user-defined
	      names.  If the source is in termcap format, tic accepts the 2-character names required by version	 6.   Other‐
	      wise these are ignored.

       -C     Force  source  translation  to  termcap format.  Note: this option differs from the -C option of infocmp(1) in
	      that it does not merely translate capability names, but also translates terminfo string capability  values  to
	      termcap  format.	 tic  leaves capabilities that are not translatable 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, specify -K as well.

	      If  -C  is  combined with -c, tic makes additional checks, reporting cases where terminfo capability values do
	      not have an exact equivalent in termcap syntax.  For example:

	      •	  sgr usually does not convert, because termcap is unable to work with more than two parameters, and because
		  termcap 's language for encoding parameterized capabilities lacks many of terminfo's arithmetic and  logi‐
		  cal operators.

       -c     tells tic to perform only validation of file , including syntax problems and invalid “use” references; no out‐
	      put  is  produced.  If you specify -C (-I) with this option, tic warns about entries that, after “use” resolu‐
	      tion, exceed 1023 (4096) bytes.  Due to a fixed buffer length in older termcap libraries,	 as  well  as  buggy
	      checking	of  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 are valid expressions.  It validates	only
	      standard string capabilities, ignoring those defined with the -x option.

       -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  loca‐
	      tion  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 list
	      Limit writes and translations to the comma-separated list of terminal types.  If any name or alias of a termi‐
	      nal 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 

       -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,	cur‐
	      sor_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  capa‐
	      bilities such as bs.  This option forces a more literal translation that also preserves the obsolete capabili‐
	      ties.

       -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 for‐
	      mat.  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 en‐
	      tries 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, untrans‐
	      latable capabilities are commented-out.

       -U     tells tic to not post-process the data after parsing the source file.  Normally, it infers data which is	com‐
	      monly 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 infor‐
	      mation.

	      •	  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 ex‐
	      tended table entry for that.  User-defined capability strings whose name begins with “k” are treated as  func‐
	      tion 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 type.

	      If file is “-”, the data are read from the standard input stream.	 The file parameter may also be the path  of
	      a character device.

   Processing
       terminfo(5)  documents all but one of the capabilities recognized by tic.  The exception is the use capability, which
       enables a terminal type description to incorporate others by reference.

       tic serially reads and compiles terminal type descriptions; at any given time, the program compiles at most one	cur‐
       rent  entry.   When  tic encounters a use=entry-name field in the current entry, it reads the compiled description of
       entry-name from /etc/terminfo to complete the current entry.  If tic has already compiled a description of entry-name
       preceding the current entry in file, tic uses it preferentially.	 tic duplicates the capabilities in  entry-name	 for
       the current entry, excepting those that the current entry explicitly defines.  The foregoing has implications for ca‐
       pability cancellation.  When entry-1 declares “use=entry-2“, any canceled capabilities in entry-2 must also appear in
       entry-1 prior to “use=entry-2“ for these capabilities to be canceled in entry-1.

       Compiled	 entries  cannot  exceed 4096 bytes in the legacy storage format, or 32768 using the extended number format.
       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.

FILES
       /etc/terminfo
	      compiled terminal description database

NOTES
       There is some evidence that historic tic implementations treated description fields with no whitespace in them as ad‐
       ditional 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, ncurses tic can compile termcap sources.  In fact, entries in terminfo and termcap syn‐
       tax can be mixed in a single source file.  See terminfo(5) for the list	of  termcap  capability	 names	ncurses	 tic
       treats as equivalent to terminfo names.

       The  SVr4  man pages are not clear on the resolution rules for “use” capabilities.  ncurses's tic finds “use” targets
       anywhere in the source file, or anywhere in the file tree rooted at the location in the TERMINFO environment variable
       (if TERMINFO is defined), or in the user's $HOME/.terminfo database (if it exists), or (finally) anywhere in the sys‐
       tem's collection of compiled entries.

       The error messages from ncurses 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 ncurses 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

       •   NetBSD tic supports a few of the ncurses tic options.

	      -a -o -x

       •   NetBSD tic also adds -S, a feature which does the same thing as ncurses infocmp's -e and -E options.

       SVr4 tic's -c mode does not report bad “use” links.

       SVr4  does  not compile entries to or read entries from your $HOME/.terminfo database unless the TERMINFO environment
       variable is explicitly set to it.

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 Tru64.  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.

HISTORY
       System  V  Release 2 provided a tic utility.  It accepted a single option: -v (optionally followed by a number).	 Ac‐
       cording to Ross Ridge's comment in mytinfo, this version of tic was unable to represent canceled 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	com‐
       pleted 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 fea‐
       tures 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's tic helps with the conversion to termcap, as well as pointing out errors and inconsis‐
       tencies.	 It is also used to ensure consistency with the user-defined capabilities.  There are 527 distinct capabili‐
       ties in ncurses's terminal database; 128 of those are user-defined.

AUTHORS
       Eric S. Raymond  and
       Thomas E. Dickey 

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

ncurses 6.6						 2025-11-11						      tic(1)