The file /etc/termcap
is a text file which lists the
term
inal cap
abilities. Several applications use the
termcap
information to move the cursor in the screen and do other
screen-oriented tasks.
tcsh
, bash
, vi
and all the curses
-based applications
use the termcap
database.
The database represents various terminal types, and applications use
the TERM
environment variable to refer to the right entry in
termcap
. Each capability is then represented by a two-letter code
associated to the character string used to get the desired effect.
The separator character between different capabilities is colon (":").
As an example, the audible bell, whith code "bl", is usually represented
by the string "bl=^G
", which instructs the applications to use
the control-G character, the ASCII BEL.
In addition to the bl
capability, there is a vb
capability,
which represents the "visible bell". vb
is usually missing in the
console
entry in Linux' /etc/termcap
.