echotc

NAME

echotc - exercise terminal capabilities

SYNOPSIS

echotc [-sv] arg ...

DESCRIPTION

This command is a C-shell built-in command.

The echotc(1) command exercises the terminal capabilities (see termcap(5)) specified in one or more arguments. For example, 'echotc home' sends the cursor to the home position, 'echotc cm 3 10' sends it to column 3 and row 10, and 'echotc ts 0; echo "This is a test."; echotc fs' prints "This is a test." in the status line.

If arg is 'baud', 'cols', 'lines', 'meta' or 'tabs', prints the value of that capability ("yes" or "no" to indicate that the terminal does or does not have that capability). One might use this to make the output from a shell script less verbose on slow terminals, or limit command output to the number of lines on the screen, as in the following example:

> set history='echotc lines' 
> @ history—

Termcap strings might contain wildcards, which will not echo correctly. Use double quotes when setting a shell variable to a terminal capability string, as in the following example that places the date in the status line:

> set tosl="'echotc ts 0'"

> set frsl="'echotc fs'"
> echo -n "$tosl";date; echo -n "$frsl"

With -s, nonexistent capabilities return the empty string rather than causing an error. With -v, messages are verbose.