Set and initialize terminal type. Not entirely useless nowadays, though when dumb terminals were more common, so was this. You'd have a tset line in your .profile:
eval `tset -m vt100:vt100 -m ansi:${TERM:-ansi} -m :\?${TERM:-ansi} -e -r -s -Q`
If your terminal was not known (either from /etc/ttytype or from the TERM environment variable), that line would cause you to be prompted with
TERM = (ansi)
What's happening there is that the "tset" program in your .profile is telling you that it will assume you are an "ansi" terminal unless you tell it differently. Ordinarily you would just hit ENTER to accept "ansi", but you could type "wyse60" or "vt100" or any other valid terminal name if you were not, in fact, using an ansi terminal.
Tset would then output the proper initialization strings for your terminal.
See Termcap and Terminfo for more. -
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More Articles by Tony Lawrence © 2011-07-06 Tony Lawrence
Unlike info, pinfo does not display anything if it has nothing. I've been forever irritated by info coming up with its default page when it has nothing to tell me. (Tony Lawrence)
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tset Copyright © November 2003 Tony Lawrence
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