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 (consult the correspond-
ing 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 infor-
mation 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 POSIX.1-2008, 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 unspecified default ter-
minal 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
POSIX.1-2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for the precedence of internationalization 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 standard 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 unspecified 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 terminals 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 .pro-
file 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 POSIX.1-2008 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 gen-
eral, 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 min-
imum, the exit status of 1 should still be reserved for the Boolean operands, for those sites that wish to support them.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
stty, tabs
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1-2008, Chapter 8, Environment Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technol-
ogy -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the
event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Stan-
dard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source
files to man page format. To report such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE
/The Open Group 2013 TPUT(1P)