TPUT(1) BSD General Commands Manual TPUT(1)NAME
tput, clear — terminal capability interface
SYNOPSIS
tput [-T term] attribute ...
clearDESCRIPTION
The tput utility makes terminal-dependent information available to users
or shell applications. When invoked as the clear utility, the screen
will be cleared as if
tput clear
had been executed. The options to tput are as follows:
-T The terminal name as specified in the termcap(5) database, for
example, “vt100” or “xterm”. If not specified, tput retrieves
the “TERM” variable from the environment.
The tput utility outputs a string for each attribute that is of type
string; a number for each of type integer. Otherwise, tput exits 0 if
the terminal has the capability and 1 if it does not, without further
action.
If an attribute is of type string, and takes arguments (e.g. cursor move‐
ment, the termcap “cm” sequence) the arguments are taken from the command
line immediately following the attribute.
The following special attributes are available:
clear Clear the screen (the termcap(5) “cl” sequence).
init Initialize the terminal (the termcap(5) “is” sequence).
longname Print the descriptive name of the user's terminal type.
reset Reset the terminal (the termcap(5) “rs” sequence).
EXIT STATUS
The exit status of tput is as follows:
0 If the last attribute attribute argument is of type string or
integer, its value was successfully written to standard output.
If the argument is of type boolean, the terminal has this
attribute.
1 This terminal does not have the specified boolean attribute.
2 Usage error.
3 No information is available about the specified terminal type.
SEE ALSOtermcap(5), terminfo(5)STANDARDS
The tput utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”).
HISTORY
The tput utility appeared in 4.4BSD.
BUGS
The tput utility cannot really distinguish between different types of
attributes.
Some termcap entries depend upon having a ‘%’ in them that is just a ‘%’
and nothing more. Right now we just warn about them if they do not have
a valid type declaration. These warnings are sent to stderr.
BSD June 15, 2002 BSD