| User interface basics / Configuring a text terminal | |
When the INFORMIXTERM environment variable is set to termcap or when this variable is undefined, the runtime system will use the termcap terminal capabilities database.
The termcap solution is provided for backward compatibility. You should use terminfo instead, by setting the INFORMIXTERM variable to terminfo.
The default termcap database is in the /etc/termcap file. If this file is not found, the runtime system will use its default file $FGLDIR/etc/termcap. Use the TERMCAP environment variable to specify a different termcap file as the defaults. If you plan to modify the default termcap file, we strongly recommend that you make a copy of the original file and point to the new file with the TERMCAP variable.
In this section we will briefly describe the syntax of the termcap file. For a complete definition please refer to your operating system documentation (see man pages describing the termcap file syntax).