toe(1)

💖 toe(1) — the glow-up edition 💖

okay bestie, sit down, we're learning toe today — the user-commands girlie whose whole job is spilling the tea on which terminal types your terminfo library actually knows about. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

toe — literally just "list table of entries of terminfo terminal types." that's it. that's the girl. 💅

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

toe [-ahs] [-v [n]] [directory ...]

toe [-u|-U] file

toe -V

three whole moods, pick one, slay. ✨

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So basically, toe reports to the standard output stream the (primary) names and descriptions of the terminal types available to the terminfo library. 🌸

Each directory gets scanned; and if you don't hand it any directories at all? it just scans the default terminfo directory. no biggie. 💁

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🌈 OPTIONS 🌈

ngl the -h option is your bestie if you just wanna see where toe is looking for terminal descriptions. the rest of these? they're for the terminfo maintainers, the ones keeping the terminal-description economy running. 👑

• -a — lists entries from all terminal database directories that terminfo would search, instead of only the first one it finds.

If -s is also given, toe additionally reports, like conflict(1), which entries correspond to a given terminal database. An “*” marks entries that differ, and “+” marks equivalent entries. ✨

Without the -s option, toe does not attempt to merge duplicates in its report. no dedup, no filter, raw feed. 💀

• -h — writes a heading naming each directory as it is accessed. it's giving "hi bestie, here's where I'm at." 🗺️
• -s — sorts the output by the entry names. alphabetized and organized, we love to see it. 🎀
• -u file — lists terminal type dependencies in file, which is a terminfo entry source or a termcap database file. The report summarizes the “use” (terminfo) and tc (termcap) relations: each line comprises the primary name of a terminal type employing use/tc capabilities, a colon, a space- and tab-separated list of primary names of terminal types thus named, and a newline. periodt. 💅
• -U file — lists terminal type reverse dependencies in file, a terminfo entry source or termcap database file. The report summarizes the “use” (terminfo) and tc (termcap) reverse relations: each line comprises the primary name of a terminal type occurring in use/tc capabilities, a colon, a space- and tab-separated list of primary names of terminal types naming them thus, and a newline. the mirror image of -u, iconic behavior. 🪞
• -v [n] — reports verbose status information to the standard error stream, showing toe's progress. like a lil live commentary track. 🎙️

The optional parameter n is an integer between 1 and 10 inclusive, interpreted as for tic(1). If ncurses is built without tracing support, n is ignored. 🤷

• -V — reports the version of ncurses associated with this program and exits with a successful status. a lil flex, then she's out. 👋

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📁 FILES 📁

• /etc/terminfo — compiled terminal description database.

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🌍 PORTABILITY 🌍

toe is not provided by other implementations. There is no applicable X/Open or POSIX standard for it. she's one of a kind, no cap. 💅✨

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📜 HISTORY 📜

toe replaces a -T option that was briefly supported by the ncurses infocmp utility in 1995. the lore goes deep. 🕰️

The -a and -s options were added in 2006 and 2011, respectively. glow-ups happen over time bestie. 💖

The program's name originates with a developer's pun: 😭

• tic,
• tac (now tack),
• toe.

the pun is the entire point. respect the pun. 👑

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🌸 EXAMPLES 🌸

When not sorting with the -s option, the -a option reports all of the names found in all of the terminal database directories named in the TERMINFO and TERMINFO_DIRS environment variables. 🫶

xterm-color     generic color xterm
xterm-xfree86   xterm terminal emulator (XFree86)
xterm-vt220     xterm emulating vt220
xterm-256color  xterm with 256 colors
xterm-r6        xterm X11R6 version
xterm-r5        xterm R5 version
xterm-mono      monochrome xterm
xterm           xterm terminal emulator (X Window System)
vt220           dec vt220
vt102           dec vt102
vt100           dec vt100 (w/advanced video)
vt52            dec vt52
...

Use the -a and -s options together to show where each terminal description was found. the little arrows are literally a map, iykyk. 🗺️✨

--> /etc/terminfo
----> /lib/terminfo
------> /usr/share/terminfo
--*---: vt100           dec vt100 (w/advanced video)
--*---: vt102           dec vt102
--*---: vt220           dec vt220
--*---: vt52            dec vt52
--*---: xterm           xterm terminal emulator (X Window System)
--*---: xterm-256color  xterm with 256 colors
--*---: xterm-color     generic color xterm
--*---: xterm-mono      monochrome xterm
--*---: xterm-r5        xterm R5 version
--*---: xterm-r6        xterm X11R6 version
--*---: xterm-vt220     xterm emulating vt220
--*---: xterm-xfree86   xterm terminal emulator (XFree86)
...

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

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

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k bye bestie, that's the whole page 🦋 — this one's from ncurses 6.6, dated 2025-11-11, and yeah, she's serving toe(1) realness. 💖✨🎀