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TPUT(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual TPUT(1P)

PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (con-
sult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on
Linux.

NAME
tput - change terminal characteristics

SYNOPSIS
tput [-T type] operand...

DESCRIPTION
The tput utility shall display terminal-dependent information. The manner in which this information is retrieved is
unspecified. The information displayed shall clear the terminal screen, initialize the user's terminal, or reset the
user's terminal, depending on the operand given. The exact consequences of displaying this information are unspecified.

OPTIONS
The tput utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax
Guidelines.

The following option shall be supported:

-T type
Indicate the type of terminal. If this option is not supplied and the TERM variable is unset or null, an unspeci-
fied default terminal type shall be used. The setting of type shall take precedence over the value in TERM.

OPERANDS
The following strings shall be supported as operands by the implementation in the POSIX locale:

clear Display the clear-screen sequence.

init Display the sequence that initializes the user's terminal in an implementation-defined manner.

reset Display the sequence that resets the user's terminal in an implementation-defined manner.

If a terminal does not support any of the operations described by these operands, this shall not be considered an error
condition.

STDIN
Not used.

INPUT FILES
None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of tput:

LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions
volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for the precedence of international-
ization variables used to determine the values of locale categories.)

LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalization variables.

LC_CTYPE
Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-
byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments).

LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to stan-
dard error.

NLSPATH
Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES .

TERM Determine the terminal type. If this variable is unset or null, and if the -T option is not specified, an unspeci-
fied default terminal type shall be used.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.

STDOUT
If standard output is a terminal device, it may be used for writing the appropriate sequence to clear the screen or reset
or initialize the terminal. If standard output is not a terminal device, undefined results occur.

STDERR
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES
None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.

EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:

0 The requested string was written successfully.

1 Unspecified.

2 Usage error.

3 No information is available about the specified terminal type.

4 The specified operand is invalid.

>4 An error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
If one of the operands is not available for the terminal, tput continues processing the remaining operands.

The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE
The difference between resetting and initializing a terminal is left unspecified, as they vary greatly based on hardware
types. In general, resetting is a more severe action.

Some terminals use control characters to perform the stated functions, and on such terminals it might make sense to use
tput to store the initialization strings in a file or environment variable for later use. However, because other termi-
nals might rely on system calls to do this work, the standard output cannot be used in a portable manner, such as the
following non-portable constructs:

ClearVar=`tput clear`
tput reset | mailx -s "Wake Up" ddg

EXAMPLES
1. Initialize the terminal according to the type of terminal in the environmental variable TERM. This command can be
included in a .profile file.

tput init

2. Reset a 450 terminal.

tput -T 450 reset

RATIONALE
The list of operands was reduced to a minimum for the following reasons:

* The only features chosen were those that were likely to be used by human users interacting with a terminal.

* Specifying the full terminfo set was not considered desirable, but the standard developers did not want to select
among operands.

* This volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 does not attempt to provide applications with sophisticated terminal handling
capabilities, as that falls outside of its assigned scope and intersects with the responsibilities of other standards
bodies.

The difference between resetting and initializing a terminal is left unspecified as this varies greatly based on hardware
types. In general, resetting is a more severe action.

The exit status of 1 is historically reserved for finding out if a Boolean operand is not set. Although the operands were
reduced to a minimum, the exit status of 1 should still be reserved for the Boolean operands, for those sites that wish
to support them.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.