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tput

Depending on the system, tput uses the terminfoortermcap database, as well as looking into the environment for the terminal type.

Tput was provided in UNIX System V in the early 1980s. A clone of the AT&T tput was submitted to volume 7 of the mod.sources newsgroup (later comp.sources.unix) in September 1986.^[1][2] In contrast to the System V program, the clone used termcap rather than terminfo. It accepted command-line parameters for the cm (cursor addressing) capability, and recognized terminfo capability names.

System V Release 3 provided an improved version which combined the different initialization capabilities as a new option init, and the reset capabilities as reset, thereby simplifying use of tput for initializing or reinitializing the terminal.^[3] System V Release 3.2 added several printer-specific capabilities to the terminfo database, such as swidm (enter_doublewide_mode) which tput could use. It also added capabilities for color.

System V Release 4 defined additional terminfo capabilities including standardized ANSI color capabilities setaf and setab, which could be used by tput.

BSD platforms provided a different implementation of tput in 4.3BSD-Reno (June 1990).^[4] It used termcap, recognizing only termcap capability names, and did not accept command-line parameters for cursor-addressing. FreeBSD used this in 1994, improving it by accepting one or two numeric command-line parameters.^[5]

Ross Ridge's mytinfo package in 1992^[6] provided a tput which accepted either termcap or terminfo capability names. Like the Reno implementation, it did not pass command-line arguments to parameterized capabilities. ncurses incorporated the mytinfo code in June 1995. The initial version added a -S option, and interpreted command-line parameters as described in the System V Release 4 documentation.

The Open Group defines one option (-T, to specify the terminal type) and three keywords (init, clear and reset). Most implementations accept the name of a terminal capability together with any parameters that may be needed for that. However, some implementations expect a termcap name, while others expect a terminfo name.

All System V Release 4 implementations, as well as those which are designed to be compatible, also recognize a -S option (to tell tput to read data from the standard input), and an additional keyword longname. They also accept command-line parameters, usually distinguishing numeric from string parameters by the form of the parameter, checking for all-numeric characters. That makes it impossible for example to set a function-key label to a string of digits. Using a different approach, ncurses determines the expected type of the parameters with a table of the terminfo capabilities which use string parameters, eliminating the ambiguity.

• List of Unix commands

• Tansley, D. S. W. (2000). "Creating screen output". Linux and UNIX shell programming. Safari Tech Books Online. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0-201-67472-9.

The Wikibook Guide to Unix has a page on the topic of: Commands

• tput – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 4 from The Open Group
• tput(1) – Linux User Manual – User Commands
• tput(1) manual page for ncurses
• AIX
• BSDI at the Wayback Machine (archived May 13, 2013)
• SCO
• HPUX at the Wayback Machine (archived March 4, 2016)
• SGI
• Sun
• Tru64 at the Wayback Machine (archived February 7, 2012)

• Colours and Cursor Movement With tput in Bash Prompt HOWTO
• Discover tput on IBM DeveloperWorks