toe(1M)

💖 toe — bestie's guide to listing terminfo terminal types 💖

okay so this is toe, from section 1M of the manual (user commands), and she's literally the cutest little lookup tool. no cap.

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✨ NAME ✨

toe — list table of entries of terminfo terminal types 🦋

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

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

toe [-u|-U] file

toe -V

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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. like, it's giving catalog. it's giving menu. 🎀

each directory gets scanned; if you don't hand it any, toe scans the default terminfo directory instead. periodt.

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

ngl the -h option can be genuinely helpful to observe where toe is looking for terminal descriptions 👀. the other options support maintainers of terminfo terminal descriptions (shoutout to the maintainers, they're the main characters fr fr).

• -a — lists entries from all terminal database directories that terminfo would search, instead of only the first that 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 merging, no blending, we're keeping it separate 💅)

• -h — writes a heading naming each directory as it is accessed. like a little name tag for every directory 🏷️
• -s — sorts the output by the entry names. alphabetized and iconic ✨
• -u file — lists terminal type dependencies in file, a terminfo entry source or 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.
• -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.

-u and -U are like mirror selfies of each other. one goes forward, one goes backward, both slay. 🪞

• -v [n] — reports verbose status information to the standard error stream, showing toe's progress. she's narrating her own journey 🎤

the optional parameter n is an integer between 1 and 10 inclusive, interpreted as for tic(1M). if ncurses is built without tracing support, n is ignored. (ignored, not offended. she's chill about it 🙈)

• -V — reports the version of ncurses associated with this program and exits with a successful status. flexing the version number, as she should 👑

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✨ FILES ✨

• /usr/share/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, she's not standardised, she's unbothered 💅✨

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✨ HISTORY ✨

toe replaces a -T option that was briefly supported by the ncurses infocmp utility in 1995. (briefly!! like a situationship 😭)

the -a and -s options were added in 2006 and 2011, respectively.

the program's name originates with a developer's pun:

• tic,
• tac (now tack),
• toe.

the way that is the most dad-joke-coded naming convention ever and honestly? we're obsessed. 🫶

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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. it's giving receipt, it's giving provenance, it's giving "yes i can tell you exactly which directory this came from" 🔍

--> /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(1M), infocmp(1M), infotocap(1M), tic(1M), curses(3X), terminfo(5)

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okay bestie that's the whole page, you ate that read 💖 go forth and list some terminal types, you've got this 🦋✨

this was ncurses 6.6, dated 2025-11-11 — love u, bye 👑