UL(1)                     BSD General Commands Manual                    UL(1)

NAME
     ul -- do underlining

SYNOPSIS
     ul [-i] [-t terminal] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
     The ul utility reads the named files (or standard input if none are
     given) and translates occurrences of underscores to the sequence which
     indicates underlining for the terminal in use, as specified by the envi-
     ronment variable TERM.  The file /etc/termcap is read to determine the
     appropriate sequences for underlining.  If the terminal is incapable of
     underlining, but is capable of a standout mode then that is used instead.
     If the terminal can overstrike, or handles underlining automatically, ul
     degenerates to cat(1).  If the terminal cannot underline, underlining is
     ignored.  During the translation some other special characters also get
     translated.  E.g. TAB gets expanded to spaces.

     The following options are available:

     -i      Underlining is indicated by a separate line containing appropri-
             ate dashes '-'; this is useful when you want to look at the
             underlining which is present in an nroff(1) output stream on a
             CRT-terminal.

     -t terminal
             Overrides the terminal type specified in the environment with
             terminal.

ENVIRONMENT
     The LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and TERM environment variables affect the exe-
     cution of ul as described in environ(7).

EXIT STATUS
     The ul utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

SEE ALSO
     colcrt(1), man(1), nroff(1)

HISTORY
     The ul command appeared in 3.0BSD.

BUGS
     The nroff(1) command usually outputs a series of backspaces and under-
     lines intermixed with the text to indicate underlining.  No attempt is
     made to optimize the backward motion.

BSD                             August 4, 2004                             BSD
