TERM(5)                              SysV                              TERM(5)



NAME
     term - conventional names for terminals

DESCRIPTION
     These names are used by certain commands (for example, man(1), tabs(1),
     tput(1), vi(1) and curses(3X)) and are maintained as part of the shell
     environment in the environment variable TERM (see sh(1), profile(4), and
     environ(5)).  For a complete list of the known terminal names, type

          ls -C /usr/lib/terminfo/?

     Entries in terminfo(4) source files consist of a number of comma-
     separated fields.  (To obtain the source description for a terminal, use
     the -I option of infocmp(1M).)  White space after each comma is ignored.
     The first line of each terminal description in the terminfo(4) database
     gives the names by which terminfo(4) knows the terminal, separated by bar
     ( | ) characters.  The first name given is the most common abbreviation
     for the terminal (this is the one to use to set the environment variable
     TERMINFO in $HOME/.profile; see profile(4)), the last name given should
     be a long name fully identifying the terminal, and all others are
     understood as synonyms for the terminal name.  All names but the last
     should contain no blanks and must be unique in the first 14 characters;
     the last name may contain blanks for readability.

     Terminal names (except for the last, verbose entry) should be chosen
     using the following conventions.

     +  The particular piece of hardware making up the terminal should have a
        root name consisting of up to 8 characters, chosen from [a-z0-9]:
        4014 for the Tektronix 4014 terminal, for example.  Synonyms may be
        defined that do not conflict with other names.

     +  Names should generally be based on original vendors, rather than local
        distributors.  A terminal acquired from one vendor should not have
        more than one distinct basic name.

     +  Terminal submodels, operational modes that the hardware can be in, or
        user preferences, should be indicated by appending a hyphen and an
        indicator of the mode.  The following suffixes should be used where
        possible:

               Suffix                 Meaning                  Example
               -w       Wide mode (more than 80 columns)       c108-w
               -am      With auto. margins (usually default)   vt100-am
               -nam     Without automatic margins              vt100-nam
               -n       Number of lines on the screen          aaa-60
               -na      No arrow keys (leave them in local)    c100-na
               -np      Number of pages of memory              c100-4p
               -rv      Reverse video                          aaa-rv

     +  To avoid conflicts with the naming conventions used in describing the
        different modes of a terminal (for example, -w), it is recommended
        that a terminal's root name not contain hyphens.

     +  It is good practice to make all terminal names used in the terminfo(4)
        database unique.  Terminal entries that are present only for inclusion
        in other entries via the use= facilities should have a "+" in their
        name, as in adm3a+.

     Commands whose behavior depends on the type of terminal should accept
     arguments of the form -Tterm where term is one of the names given above;

     if no such argument is present, such commands should obtain the terminal
     type from the environment variable TERM, which, in turn, should contain
     term.

FILES
     /usr/lib/terminfo/?/* compiled terminal description database

SEE ALSO
     curses(3X), profile(4), terminfo(4), environ(5).
     man(1), sh(1), stty(1), tabs(1), tput(1), tplot(1G), vi(1).
     infocmp(1M).

NOTES
     Not all programs follow the above naming conventions.