terminfo vs. termcap

Guy Harris guy at auspex.UUCP
Sat Feb 4 05:58:00 AEST 1989


>Just a note to say that /etc/termcap didn't originate at Berkeley.
>Version 7 and System III from AT&T used it, too.

Just a note to say that the above claim is completely false.  V7 most
definitely did *not* come from AT&T with "termcap", and neither did
System III. 

"termcap" originally came from Berkeley with the first Berkeley Software
Distribution ("first", not "First", since there was only one at the
time), which was based on V6.

(Historical note: V6 didn't have the notion of "environment variables",
so the Berkeley V6 enhancements included had some hack involving a file
in, as I remember, "/etc", which stored a two-character terminal type
for each port; that's why there are those two-character names in
"termcap".)

Some vendors may have *added* "/etc/termcap" to their V7 or S3 systems,
but that's a different matter.



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