Tput

With tput and a bit of work, you can create a full-blown, menu-driven shell script that will look great!

This article is only the beginning of what you can do with tput.

Further, rather than use arcane symbols and numbers, modern UNIX systems use tput to look up and emit escapes by name or purpose.

Using the cup option, or cursor position, in tput, you can move the cursor to any X or Y coordinates in the device's rows and columns.

The tput command initializes and manipulates your terminal session through the terminfo database.

To clear data from the current cursor position the end of a line, you use tput el.

To clear data from the current cursor position to the end of the device, you use tput ed.

The tput command, like most commands in UNIX, can be used either at your shell command line or inside a shell script.

To gain a better understanding of tput, this article starts with the command line, and then continues into shell script examples.

The script introduces how you can use many of the options in tput explained in this article to enhance your coding.

Introducing tput into shell scripts in UNIX can enhance the look and feel of scripts.

Moving the cursor's position on the respective device is easily done with tput.

When the information has been displayed, the cursor must return to the original location that was saved with tput sc.

If you want to clear the entire device, use tput clear.

To move the cursor to the fifth column (X) and the first row (Y) on a device, simply execute tput cup 5 1.

Using tput can help you in such conditions.

You must pour the tea, then the milk-you can'tput the milk in first, then the tea.

To make the cursor invisible, use the civis option (for example, tput civis).