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 environment variable TERM.  The file /etc/termcap is read to deter‐
     mine the appropriate sequences for underlining.  If the terminal is incapable of underlin‐
     ing, but is capable of a standout mode then that is used instead.  If the terminal can over‐
     strike, or handles underlining automatically, ul degenerates to cat(1).  If the terminal
     cannot underline, underlining is ignored.  During the translation some other special charac‐
     ters also get translated.  E.g. TAB gets expanded to spaces.

     The following options are available:

     -i      Underlining is indicated by a separate line containing appropriate 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 execution 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 underlines intermixed with
     the text to indicate underlining.  No attempt is made to optimize the backward motion.

BSD                                       August 4, 2004                                      BSD