STORAGELOCATION
Compiled terminfo descriptions are placed under the direc-
tory /usr/share/terminfo. Two configurations are sup-
ported (when building the ncurses libraries):
directorytree
A two-level scheme is used to avoid a linear search
of a huge UNIX system directory: /usr/share/ter-minfo/c/name where name is the name of the terminal,
and c is the first character of name. Thus, act4 can
be found in the file /usr/share/terminfo/a/act4.
Synonyms for the same terminal are implemented by
multiple links to the same compiled file.
hasheddatabase
Using Berkeley database, two types of records are
stored: the terminfo data in the same format as
stored in a directory tree with the terminfo's pri-
mary name as a key, and records containing only
aliases pointing to the primary name.
If built to write hashed databases, ncurses can still
read terminfo databases organized as a directory
tree, but cannot write entries into the directory
tree. It can write (or rewrite) entries in the
hashed database.
ncurses distinguishes the two cases in the TERMINFO
and TERMINFO_DIRS environment variable by assuming a
directory tree for entries that correspond to an
existing directory, and hashed database otherwise.
STORAGEFORMAT
The format has been chosen so that it will be the same on
all hardware. An 8 or more bit byte is assumed, but no
assumptions about byte ordering or sign extension are
made.
The compiled file is created with the tic program, and
read by the routine setupterm. The file is divided into
six parts: the header, terminal names, boolean flags, num-
bers, strings, and string table.
The header section begins the file. This section contains
six short integers in the format described below. These
integers are
(1) the magic number (octal 0432);
(2) the size, in bytes, of the names section;
(3) the number of bytes in the boolean section;
(4) the number of short integers in the numbers sec-
tion;
(5) the number of offsets (short integers) in the
strings section;
(6) the size, in bytes, of the string table.
Short integers are stored in two 8-bit bytes. The first
byte contains the least significant 8 bits of the value,
and the second byte contains the most significant 8 bits.
(Thus, the value represented is 256*second+first.) The
value -1 is represented by the two bytes 0377, 0377; other
negative values are illegal. This value generally means
that the corresponding capability is missing from this
terminal. Note that this format corresponds to the hard-
ware of the VAX and PDP-11 (that is, little-endian
machines). Machines where this does not correspond to the
hardware must read the integers as two bytes and compute
the little-endian value.
The terminal names section comes next. It contains the
first line of the terminfo description, listing the vari-
ous names for the terminal, separated by the `|' charac-
ter. The section is terminated with an ASCII NUL charac-
ter.
The boolean flags have one byte for each flag. This byte
is either 0 or 1 as the flag is present or absent. The
capabilities are in the same order as the file <term.h>.
Between the boolean section and the number section, a null
byte will be inserted, if necessary, to ensure that the
number section begins on an even byte (this is a relic of
the PDP-11's word-addressed architecture, originally
designed in to avoid IOT traps induced by addressing a
word on an odd byte boundary). All short integers are
aligned on a short word boundary.
The numbers section is similar to the flags section. Each
capability takes up two bytes, and is stored as a little-
endian short integer. If the value represented is -1, the
capability is taken to be missing.
The strings section is also similar. Each capability is
stored as a short integer, in the format above. A value
of -1 means the capability is missing. Otherwise, the
value is taken as an offset from the beginning of the
string table. Special characters in ^X or \c notation are
stored in their interpreted form, not the printing repre-
sentation. Padding information $<nn> and parameter infor-
mation %x are stored intact in uninterpreted form.
The final section is the string table. It contains all
the values of string capabilities referenced in the string
section. Each string is null terminated.
EXTENDEDSTORAGEFORMAT
The previous section describes the conventional terminfo
binary format. With some minor variations of the offsets
(see PORTABILITY), the same binary format is used in all
modern UNIX systems. Each system uses a predefined set of
boolean, number or string capabilities.
The ncurses libraries and applications support extended
terminfo binary format, allowing users to define capabili-
ties which are loaded at runtime. This e Foundation, Inc. *
* *
* Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a *
* copy of this software and associated documentation files (the *
* "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including *
* without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, *
* distribute, distribute with modifications, sublicense, and/or sell *
* copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is *
* furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: *
* *
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* in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. *
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* THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS *
* OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF *
* MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. *
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* DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR *
* OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR *
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****************************************************************************
* @Id: curs_printw.3x,v 1.17 2006/12/24 16:05:17 tom Exp @
-->
curs_printw 3x
The printw, wprintw, mvprintw and mvwprintw routines are
analogous to printf [see printf(3)]. In effect, the
string that would be output by printf is output instead as
though waddstr were used on the given window.
The vwprintw and wv_printw routines are analogous to
vprintf [see printf(3)] and perform a wprintw using a
variable argument list. The third argument is a va_list,
a pointer to a list of arguments, as defined in
<stdarg.h>.
RETURN VALUE
Routines that return an integer return ERR upon failure
and OK (SVr4 only specifies "an integer value other than
ERR") upon successful completion.
X/Open defines no error conditions. In this implementa-
tion, an error may be returned if it cannot allocate
enough memory for the buffer used to format the results.
It will return an error if the window pointer is null.
PORTABILITY
The XSI Curses standard, Issue 4 describes these func-
tions. The function vwprintw