| CAPFILE(5) | File Formats Manual | CAPFILE(5) | 
capfile —
capfile describes the format of capability database
  files, made popular by termcap.
  termcap itself has been superseded by
  terminfo(5), which contains
  equivalent termcap capabilities, and this page exists
  solely to document the termcap format as it is still
  used by other programs such as
  rtadvd.conf(5).
Entries in capfile consist of a number of
    `:'-separated fields. The first entry for each record gives the names that
    are known for the record, separated by `|' characters. By convention, the
    last name is usually a comment and is not intended as a lookup tag. The
    entry must be terminated by the `:' character.
T3|tty33|33|tty|Teletype model 33:\ :bl=^G:co#72:.cr=9^M:cr=^M:do=^J:hc:os:am@:
Entries may continue onto multiple lines by giving a \ as the last character of a line, and empty fields may be included for readability (here between the last field on a line and the first field on the next). Comments may be included on lines beginning with “#”.
capfile are of three types: Boolean
  capabilities, numeric capabilities, and string capabilities.
Boolean capabilities are just the name, to indicate the ability is present.
Numeric capabilities are followed by the character `#' then the value. In the example above co gives the value `72'.
String capabilities are followed by the character `=' and then the string. In the example above bl gives the value `^G'.
Sometimes individual capabilities must be commented out. To do this, put a period (`.') before the capability name. For example, see the first cr in the example above.
Sometimes individual capabilities must be marked as absent. To do this, put a @ after the capability name. For example, see the last am in the example above. This is only useful when merging entries. See the tc=name discussion below for more details.
0x’ or
  ‘0X’ it is interpreted as a hexadecimal
  number (both upper and lower case a-f may be used to denote the extended
  hexadecimal digits). Otherwise, if the number starts with a
  ‘0’ it is interpreted as an octal
  number. Otherwise the number is interpreted as a decimal number.
String capability values may contain any character. Non-printable
    ASCII codes, new lines, and colons may be
    conveniently represented by the use of escape sequences:
| ^X | ('X' & 037) | control-X | 
| \b, \B | (ASCII 010) | backspace | 
| \t, \T | (ASCII 011) | tab | 
| \n, \N | (ASCII 012) | line feed (newline) | 
| \f, \F | (ASCII 014) | form feed | 
| \r, \R | (ASCII 015) | carriage return | 
| \e, \E | (ASCII 027) | escape | 
| \c, \C | (:) | colon | 
| \\ | (\) | back slash | 
| \^ | (^) | caret | 
| \nnn | (ASCII octal nnn) | 
A ‘\’ followed by up to three octal digits directly
    specifies the numeric code for a character. The use of ASCII
    NULs, while easily encoded, causes all sorts of
    problems and must be used with care since NULs are
    typically used to denote the end of strings; many applications use
    ‘\200’ to represent a NUL.
A special capability, “tc=name”, is used to indicate that the record specified by name should be substituted for the “tc” capability. “tc” capabilities may interpolate records which also contain “tc” capabilities and more than one “tc” capability may be used in a record. A “tc” expansion scope (i.e. where the argument is searched for) contains the file in which the “tc” is declared and all subsequent files in the file array.
termcap described the capabilities of terminals, used by
  programs such as vi(1) and
  hack(6). These programs still use
  termcap today, but their capability requests are
  mapped onto terminfo(5) ones
  instead. As such, the termcap database file is no longer shipped with
  NetBSD.
| March 27, 2012 | NetBSD 10.1 |