DOKK / manpages / debian 11 / ncurses-bin / toe.1.en
toe(1) General Commands Manual toe(1)

toe - table of (terminfo) entries

toe [-v[n]] [-ahsuUV] file...

With no options, toe lists all available terminal types by primary name with descriptions. File arguments specify the directories to be scanned; if no such arguments are given, your default terminfo directory is scanned. If you also specify the -h option, a directory header will be issued as each directory is entered.

There are other options intended for use by terminfo file maintainers:

report on all of the terminal databases which ncurses would search, rather than only the first one that it finds.
If the -s is also given, toe adds a column to the report, showing (like conflict(1)) which entries which belong to a given terminal database. An "*" marks entries which differ, and "+" marks equivalent entries.
Without the -s option, toe does not attempt to merge duplicates in its report
sort the output by the entry names.
says to write a report to the standard output, listing dependencies in the given terminfo/termcap source file. The report condenses the “use” relation: each line consists of the primary name of a terminal that has use capabilities, followed by a colon, followed by the whitespace-separated primary names of all terminals which occur in those use capabilities, followed by a newline
says to write a report to the standard output, listing reverse dependencies in the given terminfo/termcap source file. The report reverses the “use” relation: each line consists of the primary name of a terminal that occurs in use capabilities, followed by a colon, followed by the whitespace-separated primary names of all terminals which depend on it, followed by a newline.
specifies that (verbose) output be written to standard error, showing toe's progress.
The optional parameter n is a number from 1 to 10, interpreted as for tic(1). If ncurses is built without tracing support, the optional parameter is ignored.
reports the version of ncurses which was used in this program, and exits.

Without sorting, the -a option reports all of the names found in all of the terminal databases found by the TERMINFO and TERMINFO_DIRS environment variables:


MtxOrb162 	16x2 Matrix Orbital LCD display
MtxOrb204 	20x4 Matrix Orbital LCD display
MtxOrb    	Generic Matrix Orbital LCD display
qvt101+   	qume qvt 101 PLUS product
qvt119+-25	QVT 119 PLUS with 25 data lines
qansi-g   	QNX ANSI
qvt103    	qume qvt 103
qnxw      	QNX4 windows
qansi-w   	QNX ansi for windows
qnxm      	QNX4 with mouse events
qvt203-25-w	QVT 203 PLUS with 25 by 132 columns
qansi-t   	QNX ansi without console writes
. . .

Use the -a and -s options together to show where each terminal description was found:


--> /usr/local/ncurses/share/terminfo
----> /usr/share/terminfo
*-+-:	9term     	Plan9 terminal emulator for X
*---:	Eterm     	Eterm with xterm-style color support (X Window System)
*-*-:	Eterm-256color	Eterm with xterm 256-colors
*-*-:	Eterm-88color	Eterm with 88 colors
*-+-:	MtxOrb    	Generic Matrix Orbital LCD display
*-+-:	MtxOrb162 	16x2 Matrix Orbital LCD display
*-+-:	MtxOrb204 	20x4 Matrix Orbital LCD display
*-*-:	NCR260VT300WPP	NCR 2900_260 vt300 wide mode pc+  kybd
*-+-:	aaa       	ann arbor ambassador/30 lines
*-+-:	aaa+dec   	ann arbor ambassador in dec vt100 mode
*-+-:	aaa+rv    	ann arbor ambassador in reverse video
. . .

/etc/terminfo/?/*
Compiled terminal description database.

This utility is not provided by other implementations. There is no relevant X/Open or POSIX standard for toe.

The program name refers to a developer's pun:

  • tic,
  • tac (now tack),
  • toe.

It replaced a -T option which was briefly supported by the ncurses infocmp utility in 1995.

The -a and -s options were added to toe several years later (2006 and 2011, respectively).

tic(1), infocmp(1), captoinfo(1), infotocap(1), ncurses(3NCURSES), terminfo(5).

This describes ncurses version 6.2 (patch 20201114).