| Updated: October 28, 2024 |
Some programs, such as vi, need to know just what your terminal can do, so that they can move the cursor, clear the screen, and so on. The TERM environment variable indicates the type of terminal that you're using, and the /usr/share/terminfo directory is the terminal database.
In this directory, you can find subdirectories (a through z) that contain the information for specific terminals. Some applications use /etc/termcap, the older single-file database model, instead of /usr/share/terminfo.
The default terminal is qansi-m, the QNX version of an ANSI terminal. For more information about setting the terminal type, see “Terminal types” in Configuring Your Environment.