8.2.2 Find a Terminal Description

• int tgetent(void *buffer, const char *termtype)  
  On the Linux operating system the current terminal name is contained in the environment variable . So, termtype is the result of a call to (3).

  For buffer, no memory has to be allocated when using the GNU version of termcap. This is what we can assume under Linux! Otherwise, you'll have to allocate 2048 Bytes. (Formerly, buffer only needed to be 1024 Bytes, but the size has doubled).

  tgetent(...) returns 1 on success and 0 when the database is found but has no entry for TERM. Other errors will return different values.

  The following example should explain how to use tgetent(...):

  #define buffer 0
  char *termtype=getenv("TERM");
  int ok;
  
  ok=tgetent(buffer,termtype);
  if(ok==1)
    /* all right, we have the entry */
  else if(ok==0)
   /* uups, something wrong with TERM
    * check termtype first, then termcap database
    */
  else
   /* huuu, fatal error */
  

  By, default termcap uses /etc/termcap/ as the database. If the environment variable TERMCAP is set, with $HOME/mytermcap for instance, all functions will use instead of /etc/termcap. With no leading slash in TERMCAP, the defined value is used as a name for a terminal.