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tset(1)                                                                                              tset(1)



NAME
       tset, reset - terminal initialization

SYNOPSIS
       tset [-IQVcqrsw] [-] [-e ch] [-i ch] [-k ch] [-m mapping] [terminal]
       reset [-IQVcqrsw] [-] [-e ch] [-i ch] [-k ch] [-m mapping] [terminal]

DESCRIPTION
       Tset  initializes  terminals.   Tset  first determines the type of terminal that you are using.  This
       determination is done as follows, using the first terminal type found.

       1. The terminal argument specified on the command line.

       2. The value of the TERM environmental variable.

       3. (BSD systems only.) The terminal type associated with the standard  error  output  device  in  the
       /etc/ttys file.  (On Linux and System-V-like UNIXes, getty does this job by setting TERM according to
       the type passed to it by /etc/inittab.)

       4. The default terminal type, ``unknown''.

       If the terminal type was not specified on the command-line, the -m option mappings are  then  applied
       (see the section TERMINAL TYPE MAPPING for more information).  Then, if the terminal type begins with
       a question mark (``?''), the user is prompted for  confirmation  of  the  terminal  type.   An  empty
       response confirms the type, or, another type can be entered to specify a new type.  Once the terminal
       type has been determined, the terminfo entry for the terminal is retrieved.  If no terminfo entry  is
       found for the type, the user is prompted for another terminal type.

       Once  the terminfo entry is retrieved, the window size, backspace, interrupt and line kill characters
       (among many other things) are set and the terminal and tab initialization strings  are  sent  to  the
       standard  error  output.   Finally, if the erase, interrupt and line kill characters have changed, or
       are not set to their default values, their values are displayed to the standard  error  output.   Use
       the  -c  or  -w  option to select only the window sizing versus the other initialization.  If neither
       option is given, both are assumed.

       When invoked as reset, tset sets cooked and echo modes, turns off cbreak and raw modes, turns on new-line newline
       line  translation  and  resets  any unset special characters to their default values before doing the
       terminal initialization described above.  This is useful after a program dies leaving a  terminal  in
       an abnormal state.  Note, you may have to type

           <LF>reset<LF>

       (the  line-feed  character is normally control-J) to get the terminal to work, as carriage-return may
       no longer work in the abnormal state.  Also, the terminal will often not echo the command.

       The options are as follows:

       -c   Set control characters and modes.  -e Set the erase character to ch.

       -I   Do not send the terminal or tab initialization strings to the terminal.

       -i   Set the interrupt character to ch.

       -k   Set the line kill character to ch.

       -m   Specify a mapping from a port type to a terminal.  See the section  TERMINAL  TYPE  MAPPING  for
            more information.

       -Q   Do not display any values for the erase, interrupt and line kill characters.  Normally tset dis-plays displays
            plays the values for control characters which differ from the system's default values.

       -q   The terminal type is displayed to the standard output, and the terminal is  not  initialized  in
            any way.  The option `-' by itself is equivalent but archaic.

       -r   Print the terminal type to the standard error output.

       -s   Print the sequence of shell commands to initialize the environment variable TERM to the standard
            output.  See the section SETTING THE ENVIRONMENT for details.

       -V   reports the version of ncurses which was used in this program, and exits.

       -w   Resize the window to match the size deduced via setupterm.  Normally this has no effect,  unless
            setupterm is not able to detect the window size.

       The  arguments  for the -e, -i, and -k options may either be entered as actual characters or by using
       the `hat' notation, i.e. control-h may be specified as ``^H'' or ``^h''.

SETTING THE ENVIRONMENT
       It is often desirable to enter the terminal type and information about  the  terminal's  capabilities
       into the shell's environment.  This is done using the -s option.

       When  the  -s option is specified, the commands to enter the information into the shell's environment
       are written to the standard output.  If the SHELL environmental variable ends in  ``csh'',  the  com-mands commands
       mands  are for csh, otherwise, they are for sh.  Note, the csh commands set and unset the shell vari-able variable
       able noglob, leaving it unset.  The following line in the .login or .profile  files  will  initialize
       the environment correctly:

           eval `tset -s options ... `


TERMINAL TYPE MAPPING
       When  the  terminal is not hardwired into the system (or the current system information is incorrect)
       the terminal type derived from the /etc/ttys file or the TERM environmental variable is  often  some-thing something
       thing  generic  like  network, dialup, or unknown.  When tset is used in a startup script it is often
       desirable to provide information about the type of terminal used on such ports.

       The purpose of the -m option is to map from some set of conditions to a terminal type,  that  is,  to
       tell tset ``If I'm on this port at a particular speed, guess that I'm on that kind of terminal''.

       The  argument  to  the -m option consists of an optional port type, an optional operator, an optional
       baud rate specification, an optional colon (``:'') character and a terminal type.  The port type is a
       string  (delimited  by either the operator or the colon character).  The operator may be any combina-tion combination
       tion of ``>'', ``<'', ``@'', and ``!''; ``>'' means greater than, ``<'' means less than, ``@''  means
       equal to and ``!'' inverts the sense of the test.  The baud rate is specified as a number and is com-
       pared with the speed of the standard error output (which should be the control terminal).  The termi-nal terminal
       nal type is a string.

       If  the terminal type is not specified on the command line, the -m mappings are applied to the termi-nal terminal
       nal type.  If the port type and baud rate match the mapping, the terminal type specified in the  map-ping mapping
       ping  replaces the current type.  If more than one mapping is specified, the first applicable mapping
       is used.

       For example, consider the following mapping: dialup>9600:vt100.  The port type is dialup , the opera-tor operator
       tor  is  >,  the baud rate specification is 9600, and the terminal type is vt100.  The result of this
       mapping is to specify that if the terminal type is dialup, and the baud rate  is  greater  than  9600
       baud, a terminal type of vt100 will be used.

       If  no baud rate is specified, the terminal type will match any baud rate.  If no port type is speci-fied, specified,
       fied, the terminal type will match any port type.  For example, -m dialup:vt100 -m :?xterm will cause
       any  dialup  port, regardless of baud rate, to match the terminal type vt100, and any non-dialup port
       type to match the terminal type ?xterm.  Note, because of the leading question mark, the user will be
       queried on a default port as to whether they are actually using an xterm terminal.

       No whitespace characters are permitted in the -m option argument.  Also, to avoid problems with meta-characters, metacharacters,
       characters, it is suggested that the entire -m option argument be placed within single quote  charac-ters, characters,
       ters, and that csh users insert a backslash character (``\'') before any exclamation marks (``!'').

HISTORY
       The tset command appeared in BSD 3.0.  The ncurses implementation was lightly adapted from the 4.4BSD
       sources for a terminfo environment by Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>.

COMPATIBILITY
       The tset utility has been provided for backward-compatibility with BSD environments (under most  mod-ern modern
       ern UNIXes, /etc/inittab and getty(1) can set TERM appropriately for each dial-up line; this obviates
       what was tset's most important use).  This implementation behaves like 4.4BSD tset, with a few excep-tions exceptions
       tions specified here.

       The  -S  option  of  BSD tset no longer works; it prints an error message to stderr and dies.  The -s
       option only sets TERM, not TERMCAP.  Both these changes are because the TERMCAP variable is no longer
       supported  under  terminfo-based  ncurses, which makes tset -S useless (we made it die noisily rather
       than silently induce lossage).

       There was an undocumented 4.4BSD feature that invoking tset via a link named `TSET` (or via any other
       name  beginning with an upper-case letter) set the terminal to use upper-case only.  This feature has
       been omitted.

       The -A, -E, -h, -u and -v options were deleted from the tset utility in 4.4BSD.  None  of  them  were
       documented  in  4.3BSD  and all are of limited utility at best.  The -a, -d, and -p options are simi-larly similarly
       larly not documented or useful, but were retained as they appear to be  in  widespread  use.   It  is
       strongly  recommended  that any usage of these three options be changed to use the -m option instead.
       The -n option remains, but has no effect.  The -adnp options are therefore  omitted  from  the  usage
       summary above.

       It  is  still  permissible  to  specify  the -e, -i, and -k options without arguments, although it is
       strongly recommended that such usage be fixed to explicitly specify the character.

       As of 4.4BSD, executing tset as reset no longer implies the -Q option.  Also, the interaction between
       the - option and the terminal argument in some historic implementations of tset has been removed.

ENVIRONMENT
       The tset command uses the SHELL and TERM environment variables.

FILES
       /etc/ttys
            system port name to terminal type mapping database (BSD versions only).

       /usr/share/terminfo
            terminal capability database

SEE ALSO
       csh(1), sh(1), stty(1), setupterm(3), tty(4), termcap(5), ttys(5), environ(7)




                                                                                                     tset(1)

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