# scr_dump 5

    scr_dump(5)                   File Formats Manual                  scr_dump(5)

## NAME

           scr_dump - format of curses screen-dumps.

## SYNOPSIS

           scr_dump

## DESCRIPTION

           The  curses library provides applications with the ability to write the
           contents of a window to an external file using scr_dump or putwin,  and
           read it back using scr_restore or getwin.

           The  putwin  and  getwin  functions  do  the  work;  while scr_dump and
           scr_restore conveniently save and restore the whole screen, i.e.,  std-
           scr.

### ncurses6

           A  longstanding implementation of screen-dump was revised with ncurses6
           to remedy problems with the earlier approach:

           o   A "magic number" is written to the  beginning  of  the  dump  file,
               allowing  applications  (such  as file(1)) to recognize curses dump
               files.

               Because ncurses6 uses a new format, that requires a new magic  num-
               ber  was  unused  by  other  applications.   This 16-bit number was
               unused:

                   0x8888 (octal "\210\210")

               but to be more certain, this 32-bit number was chosen:

                   0x88888888 (octal "\210\210\210\210")

               This is the pattern submitted to the maintainers of the  file  pro-
               gram:

                   #
                   # ncurses5 (and before) did not use a magic number,
                   # making screen dumps "data".
                   #
                   # ncurses6 (2015) uses this format, ignoring byte-order
                   0    string    \210\210\210\210ncurses    ncurses6 screen image
                   #

           o   The screen dumps are written in textual form, so that internal data
               sizes are not directly related to the dump-format, and enabling the
               library  to  read dumps from either narrow- or wide-character- con-
               figurations.

               The  narrow  library  configuration  holds  characters  and   video
               attributes  in  a  32-bit  chtype, while the wide-character library
               stores this information in the cchar_t  structure,  which  is  much
               larger than 32-bits.

           o   It is possible to read a screen dump into a terminal with a differ-
               ent screen-size, because the library truncates or fills the  screen
               as necessary.

           o   The ncurses6 getwin reads the legacy screen dumps from ncurses5.

### ncurses5 (legacy)

           The screen-dump feature was added to ncurses in June 1995.  While there
           were fixes and improvements in succeeding years, the basic  scheme  was
           unchanged:

           o   The WINDOW structure was written in binary form.

           o   The WINDOW structure refers to lines of data, which were written as
               an array of binary data following the WINDOW.

           o   When getwin restored the window, it would  keep  track  of  offsets
               into  the  array of line-data and adjust the WINDOW structure which
               was read back into memory.

           This is similar to Unix SystemV, but does not write a "magic number" to
           identify the file format.

## PORTABILITY

           There  is  no  standard  format for putwin.  This section gives a brief
           description of the existing formats.

### X/Open Curses

           Refer to X/Open Curses, Issue 7 (2009).

           X/Open's documentation for enhanced curses says only:

              The getwin( ) function reads window-related data stored in the  file
              by  putwin( ).  The function then creates and initializes a new win-
              dow using that data.

              The putwin( ) function writes all data associated with win into  the
              stdio  stream  to  which  filep points, using an unspecified format.
              This information can be retrieved later using getwin( ).

           In the mid-1990s when the X/Open Curses  document  was  written,  there
           were  still  systems  using older, less capable curses libraries (aside
           from the BSD curses library which was not relevant to X/Open because it
           did not meet the criteria for base curses).  The document explained the
           term "enhanced" as follows:

              o   Shading is used to identify  X/Open  Enhanced  Curses  material,
                  relating to interfaces included to provide enhanced capabilities
                  for applications originally written to be  compiled  on  systems
                  based  on  the  UNIX  operating  system. Therefore, the features
                  described may not be present on systems that conform to XPG4  or
                  to  earlier XPG releases.  The relevant reference pages may pro-
                  vide additional or more specific portability warnings about  use
                  of the material.

           In  the foregoing, emphasis was added to unspecified format and to XPG4
           or to earlier XPG releases, for clarity.

### Unix SystemV

           Unix SystemV curses identified the file format by writing a "magic num-
           ber"  at  the  beginning of the dump.  The WINDOW data and the lines of
           text follow, all in binary form.

           The Solaris curses source has these definitions:

               /* terminfo magic number */
               #define MAGNUM  0432

               /* curses screen dump magic number */
               #define SVR2_DUMP_MAGIC_NUMBER  0433
               #define SVR3_DUMP_MAGIC_NUMBER  0434

           That is, the feature was likely introduced in SVr2 (1984), and improved
           in SVr3 (1987).  The Solaris curses source has no magic number for SVr4
           (1989).  Other operating systems (AIX and  HPUX)  use  a  magic  number
           which would correspond to this definition:

               /* curses screen dump magic number */
               #define SVR4_DUMP_MAGIC_NUMBER  0435

           That  octal number in bytes is 001, 035.  Because most Unix vendors use
           big-endian hardware, the magic number is written  with  the  high-order
           byte first, e.g.,

                01 35

           After  the magic number, the WINDOW structure and line-data are written
           in binary format.  While the magic number used by the Unix systems  can
           be seen using od(1), none of the Unix systems documents the format used
           for screen-dumps.

           The Unix systems do not use identical formats.  While collecting infor-
           mation  for  for this manual page, the savescreen test-program produced
           dumps of different size (all on 64-bit hardware, on 40x80 screens):

           o   AIX (51817 bytes)

           o   HPUX (90093 bytes)

           o   Solaris 10 (13273 bytes)

           o   ncurses5 (12888 bytes)

### Solaris

           As noted above, Solaris curses has no  magic  number  corresponding  to
           SVr4  curses.  This is odd since Solaris was the first operating system
           to pass the SVr4 guidelines.  Solaris has two versions of curses:

           o   The default curses library uses the SVr3 magic number.

           o   There is an alternate curses library in  /usr/xpg4.   This  uses  a
               textual format with no magic number.

               According  to the copyright notice, the xpg4 Solaris curses library
               was developed by MKS (Mortice Kern Systems) from 1990 to 1995.

               Like ncurses6, there is  a  file-header  with  parameters.   Unlike
               ncurses6,  the  contents  of the window are written piecemeal, with
               coordinates and attributes for each chunk of text rather than writ-
               ing the whole window from top to bottom.

### PDCurses

           PDCurses  added  support  for screen dumps in version 2.7 (2005).  Like
           Unix SystemV and ncurses5, it writes the WINDOW  structure  in  binary,
           but begins the file with its three-byte identifier "PDC", followed by a
           one-byte version, e.g.,

                    "PDC\001"

### NetBSD

           As  of  April  2017,  NetBSD  curses  does  not  support  scr_dump  and
           scr_restore (or scr_init, scr_set), although it has putwin and getwin.

           Like  ncurses5, NetBSD putwin does not identify its dumps with a useful
           magic number.  It writes

           o   the curses shared library major and minor versions as the first two
               bytes (e.g., 7 and 1),

           o   followed by a binary dump of the WINDOW,

           o   some  data  for wide-characters referenced by the WINDOW structure,
               and

           o   finally, lines as done by other implementations.

## EXAMPLE

           Given a simple program which writes text to the  screen  (and  for  the
           sake of example, limiting the screen-size to 10x20):

               #include <curses.h>

               int
               main(void)
               {
                   putenv("LINES=10");
                   putenv("COLUMNS=20");
                   initscr();
                   start_color();
                   init_pair(1, COLOR_WHITE, COLOR_BLUE);
                   init_pair(2, COLOR_RED, COLOR_BLACK);
                   bkgd(COLOR_PAIR(1));
                   move(4, 5);
                   attron(A_BOLD);
                   addstr("Hello");
                   move(5, 5);
                   attroff(A_BOLD);
                   attrset(A_REVERSE | COLOR_PAIR(2));
                   addstr("World!");
                   refresh();
                   scr_dump("foo.out");
                   endwin();
                   return 0;
               }

           When run using ncurses6, the output looks like this:

               \210\210\210\210ncurses 6.0.20170415
               _cury=5
               _curx=11
               _maxy=9
               _maxx=19
               _flags=14
               _attrs=\{REVERSE|C2}
               flag=_idcok
               _delay=-1
               _regbottom=9
               _bkgrnd=\{NORMAL|C1}\s
               rows:
               1:\{NORMAL|C1}\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s
               2:\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s
               3:\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s
               4:\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s
               5:\s\s\s\s\s\{BOLD}Hello\{NORMAL}\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s
               6:\s\s\s\s\s\{REVERSE|C2}World!\{NORMAL|C1}\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s
               7:\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s
               8:\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s
               9:\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s
               10:\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s

           The first four octal escapes are actually nonprinting characters, while
           the remainder of the file is printable text.  You may notice:

           o   The actual color pair values are not written to the file.

           o   All characters are shown in printable  form;  spaces  are  "\s"  to
               ensure they are not overlooked.

           o   Attributes  are  written  in escaped curly braces, e.g., "\{BOLD}",
               and may include a color-pair (C1 or C2 in this example).

           o   The parameters in the header are  written  out  only  if  they  are
               nonzero.  When reading back, order does not matter.

           Running the same program with Solaris xpg4 curses gives this dump:

               MAX=10,20
               BEG=0,0
               SCROLL=0,10
               VMIN=1
               VTIME=0
               FLAGS=0x1000
               FG=0,0
               BG=0,0,
               0,0,0,1,
               0,19,0,0,
               1,0,0,1,
               1,19,0,0,
               2,0,0,1,
               2,19,0,0,
               3,0,0,1,
               3,19,0,0,
               4,0,0,1,
               4,5,0x20,0,Hello
               4,10,0,1,
               4,19,0,0,
               5,0,0,1,
               5,5,0x4,2,World!
               5,11,0,1,
               5,19,0,0,
               6,0,0,1,
               6,19,0,0,
               7,0,0,1,
               7,19,0,0,
               8,0,0,1,
               8,19,0,0,
               9,0,0,1,
               9,19,0,0,
               CUR=11,5

           Solaris  getwin  requires  that  all parameters are present, and in the
           same order.  The xpg4 curses library does not know about the bce  (back
           color erase) capability, and does not color the window background.

           On  the  other  hand, the SVr4 curses library does know about the back-
           ground color.  However, its screen dumps are in binary.   Here  is  the
           corresponding dump (using "od -t x1"):

               0000000 1c 01 c3 d6 f3 58 05 00 0b 00 0a 00 14 00 00 00
               0000020 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
               0000040 00 00 b8 1a 06 08 cc 1a 06 08 00 00 09 00 10 00
               0000060 00 00 00 80 00 00 20 00 00 00 ff ff ff ff 00 00
               0000100 ff ff ff ff 00 00 00 00 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00
               0000120 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00
               *
               0000620 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00 48 80 00 04
               0000640 65 80 00 04 6c 80 00 04 6c 80 00 04 6f 80 00 04
               0000660 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00
               *
               0000740 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00 57 00 81 00
               0000760 6f 00 81 00 72 00 81 00 6c 00 81 00 64 00 81 00
               0001000 21 00 81 00 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00
               0001020 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00
               *
               0001540 20 80 00 00 20 80 00 00 00 00 f6 d1 01 00 f6 d1
               0001560 08 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 07
               0001600 00 04 00 01 00 01 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00
               0001620 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
               *
               0002371

## SEE ALSO

           curs_scr_dump(3x), curs_util(3x).

## AUTHORS

           Thomas E. Dickey
           extended screen-dump format for ncurses 6.0 (2015)

           Eric S. Raymond
           screen dump feature in ncurses 1.9.2d (1995)

                                                                       scr_dump(5)