Your COBOL system can understand and use the standard UNIX System V terminfo format and structure, although it ignores any non-standard UNIX vendor-specific extensions. Some UNIX systems do not use the standard terminfo format and structure and in this case your COBOL system uses the alternative portable UNIX terminfo database described in this section.
The system terminfo database is located in /usr/lib/terminfo on most platforms and is available for general use by any system application, a typical example being the system editor vi. If a particular process requires use of an alternative general terminfo database, then this can be selected by specifying its location in the environment variable TERMINFO.
The terminal details are held in a terminfo database for general use by non-COBOL applications. They can be made suitable for use by COBOL applications but frequently there is a conflict. COBOL terminal I/O is generally more sophisticated than that of most UNIX applications and has more stringent minimal requirements of the terminfo database. The precise meaning of some the terminal information can be ambiguous and sometimes the terminfo database reflects an interpretation that differs from that made by the COBOL system. In addition, the terminfo database is sometimes modified to configure a non-COBOL application and so becomes unsuitable for use with a COBOL application.