Full list of tput options

Question

I wanted to hide the cursor, and I was aware of tput command. I did search its man page. On searching the Internet, I found

$ tput civis  # to hide the cursor
$ tput cnorm  # to bring back the cursor

These work perfectly, but these options are not mentioned anywhere in the man page.

Where are they officially documented?

score 13 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 23 '16 at 00:15

The tput command uses terminfo (from man tput):

tput [-Ttype] capname [parms ... ]

(…)

For a complete list of capabilities and the capname associated with each, see terminfo(5).

(…)

capname
indicates the capability from the terminfo database. When termcap support is compiled in, the termcap name for the capability is also accepted.

The civis and cnorm are documented in terminfo's man page:

   cursor_invisible              civis      vi        make cursor invisi‐
                                                      ble
   cursor_normal                 cnorm      ve        make cursor appear
                                                      normal (undo
                                                      civis/cvvis)

In general, when you don't know which man page describes a particular command, you can search for it. In this case, I found the above by running man -K civis.

Full list of tput options

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