SETTERM

SETTERM

Section: User commands (1)

NAME setterm - set special terminal features

SYNOPSIS

setterm [-T terminal] [-h|-l] [option... ]

DESCRIPTION setterm

accesses special terminal features which can not be accessed in a portable way by using tput(1). Examples are cursor colour, the clock in the status line etc. Its usage message depends on the environment variable TERM, because there are different options for different terminals.

OPTIONS
-T terminal

Use the type terminal instead of reading it from the environment variable TERM. This affects which feature options are available.
-h
Output usage for the currently used terminal.
-l
Output list of recognised terminal types.

RETURN VALUE On successful termination, setterm returns exit status 0.

ERRORS If the usage is printed, exit status 1 will be returned. Exit status

2 means an invalid option was used.

EXAMPLES You can set the xterm title with:

setterm -title 'Hello, world!'

ENVIRONMENT TERM      current terminal type

NOTES There are often minor firmware differences for serial terminals,

which neither can be nor are reflected by different termcap or terminfo
entries, but which do make a difference for setterm. If you select an option for a terminal but do not get the desired effect, it may be that your model does not support it.

AUTHOR This program has been written by Michael Haardt <michael@moria.de> with

improvements by Oliver Kiddle. It is in the public domain, but sending any improvements to the above address is appreciated. The current version is available from http://www.moria.de/~michael/setterm/.

HISTORY A setterm command first appeared under Minix, being part of the

virtual console patches. It has been ported to Linux, and incrementally rewritten. This program is not a derived work of either, it has been rewritten from scratch to support multiple terminal types.

SEE ALSO tput(1), termcap(5), terminfo(5)

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