Termcap

Termcap (terminal capability) is a software library and database used on Unix-like computers. It enables programs to use display computer terminals in a device-independent manner, which greatly simplifies the process of writing portable text mode applications. Bill Joy wrote the first termcap library in 1978 for the Berkeley Unix operating system; it has since been ported to most Unix and Unix-like environments. Joy's design was reportedly influenced by the design of the terminal data store in the earlier Incompatible Timesharing System.

A termcap database can describe the capabilities of hundreds of different display terminals. This allows programs to have character-based display output, independent of the type of terminal. On-screen text editors such as vi and emacs are examples of programs that may use termcap. Other programs are listed in the Termcap category.

Examples of what the database describes:

Termcap databases consist of one or more descriptions of terminals.

Each description must contain the canonical name of the terminal. It may also contain one or more aliases for the name of the terminal. The canonical name or aliases are the keys by which the library searches the termcap database.

The description contains one or more capabilities, which have conventional names. The capabilities are typed: boolean, numeric and string. The termcap library has no predetermined type for each capability name. It determines the types of each capability by the syntax:

Applications which use termcap do expect specific types for the commonly used capabilities, and obtain the values of capabilities from the termcap database using library calls that return successfully only when the database contents matches the assumed type.

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