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PTS(4)			    Kernel Interfaces Manual			PTS(4)

NAME
       pts -- pseudo-terminal driver

DESCRIPTION
       The   pts   driver   provides   support	for  a	device-pair  termed  a
       pseudo-terminal.	 A pseudo-terminal is a	pair of	character  devices,  a
       master  device  and  a  slave  device.	The slave device provides to a
       process an interface identical to that described	in  tty(4).   However,
       whereas	all  other  devices  which  provide the	interface described in
       tty(4) have a hardware device of	some sort behind them, the  slave  de-
       vice  has,  instead, another process manipulating it through the	master
       half of the pseudo-terminal.  That is, anything written on  the	master
       device  is  given  to the slave device as input and anything written on
       the slave device	is presented as	input on the master device.

       The following ioctl(2) calls apply only to pseudo-terminals:

       TIOCPKT	     Enable/disable packet mode.  Packet mode  is  enabled  by
		     specifying	 (by  reference)  a nonzero parameter and dis-
		     abled by specifying  (by  reference)  a  zero  parameter.
		     When  applied  to	the  master side of a pseudo-terminal,
		     each subsequent read(2) from  the	terminal  will	return
		     data  written  on	the  slave part	of the pseudo-terminal
		     preceded  by  a  zero  byte  (symbolically	  defined   as
		     TIOCPKT_DATA), or a single	byte reflecting	control	status
		     information.   In	the latter case, the byte is an	inclu-
		     sive-or of	zero or	more of	the bits:

		     TIOCPKT_FLUSHREAD	 whenever the read queue for the  ter-
					 minal is flushed.

		     TIOCPKT_FLUSHWRITE	 whenever the write queue for the ter-
					 minal is flushed.

		     TIOCPKT_STOP	 whenever  output  to  the terminal is
					 stopped a la `^S'.

		     TIOCPKT_START	 whenever output to  the  terminal  is
					 restarted.

		     TIOCPKT_DOSTOP	 whenever  VSTOP is `^S' and VSTART is
					 `^Q'.

		     TIOCPKT_NOSTOP	 whenever the start and	 stop  charac-
					 ters are not `^S/^Q'.

		     While this	mode is	in use,	the presence of	control	status
		     information  to  be  read from the	master side may	be de-
		     tected by a select(2) for exceptional conditions.

		     This mode is used by rlogin(1) and	rlogind(8)  to	imple-
		     ment a remote-echoed, locally `^S/^Q' flow-controlled re-
		     mote login	with proper back-flushing of output; it	can be
		     used by other similar programs.

       TIOCGPTN	     Obtain  device unit number, which can be used to generate
		     the filename of the pseudo-terminal slave	device.	  This
		     ioctl(2)  should  not  be	used  directly.	  Instead, the
		     ptsname(3)	function should	be used.

       TIOCPTMASTER  Determine whether the file	descriptor is  pointing	 to  a
		     pseudo-terminal  master device.  This ioctl(2) should not
		     be	used directly.	It is used to implement	routines  like
		     grantpt(3).

FILES
       The files used by this pseudo-terminals implementation are:

       /dev/pts/[num]  Pseudo-terminal slave devices.

DIAGNOSTICS
       None.

SEE ALSO
       posix_openpt(2),	grantpt(3), ptsname(3),	pty(4),	tty(4)

HISTORY
       A  pseudo-terminal  driver  appeared in 4.2BSD.	In FreeBSD 8.0,	it was
       replaced	with the pts driver.

FreeBSD	14.3			August 20, 2008				PTS(4)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=pts&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+14.3-RELEASE+and+Ports>

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