dumpkeys(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | FILES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

DUMPKEYS(1)              General Commands Manual             DUMPKEYS(1)

NAME         top

       dumpkeys - dump keyboard translation tables

SYNOPSIS         top

       dumpkeys [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION         top

       dumpkeys writes, to the standard output, the current contents of
       the keyboard driver's translation tables, in the format specified
       by keymaps(5).

       Using the various options, the format of the output can be
       controlled and also other information from the kernel and the
       programs dumpkeys(1) and loadkeys(1) can be obtained.

OPTIONS         top

       -h --help
              Prints the program's version number and a short usage
              message to the program's standard error output and exits.

       -i --short-info
              Prints some characteristics of the kernel's keyboard
              driver. The items shown are:

              Keycode range supported by the kernel

                     This tells what values can be used after the
                     keycode keyword in keytable files. See keymaps(5)
                     for more information and the syntax of these files.

              Number of actions bindable to a key

                     This tells how many different actions a single key
                     can output using various modifier keys. If the
                     value is 16 for example, you can define up to 16
                     different actions to a key combined with modifiers.
                     When the value is 16, the kernel probably knows
                     about four modifier keys, which you can press in
                     different combinations with the key to access all
                     the bound actions.

              Ranges of action codes supported by the kernel

                     This item contains a list of action code ranges in
                     hexadecimal notation.  These are the values that
                     can be used in the right hand side of a key
                     definition, ie. the vv's in a line

                            keycode xx = vv vv vv vv

                     (see keymaps(5) for more information about the
                     format of key definition lines).  dumpkeys(1) and
                     loadkeys(1) support a symbolic notation, which is
                     preferable to the numeric one, as the action codes
                     may vary from kernel to kernel while the symbolic
                     names usually remain the same. However, the list of
                     action code ranges can be used to determine, if the
                     kernel actually supports all the symbols
                     loadkeys(1) knows, or are there maybe some actions
                     supported by the kernel that have no symbolic name
                     in your loadkeys(1) program. To see this, you
                     compare the range list with the action symbol list,
                     see option --long-info below.

              Number of function keys supported by kernel

                     This tells the number of action codes that can be
                     used to output strings of characters. These action
                     codes are traditionally bound to the various
                     function and editing keys of the keyboard and are
                     defined to send standard escape sequences. However,
                     you can redefine these to send common command
                     lines, email addresses or whatever you like.
                     Especially if the number of this item is greater
                     than the number of function and editing keys in
                     your keyboard, you may have some "spare" action
                     codes that you can bind to AltGr-letter
                     combinations, for example, to send some useful
                     strings. See loadkeys(1) for more details.

              Function strings

                     You can see you current function key definitions
                     with the command

                            dumpkeys --funcs-only

       -l -s --long-info
              This option instructs dumpkeys to print a long information
              listing. The output is the same as with the --short-info
              appended with the list of action symbols supported by
              loadkeys(1) and dumpkeys(1), along with the symbols'
              numeric values.

       -n --numeric
              This option causes dumpkeys to by-pass the conversion of
              action code values to symbolic notation and to print the
              in hexadecimal format instead.

       -f --full-table
              This makes dumpkeys skip all the short-hand heuristics
              (see keymaps(5)) and output the key bindings in the
              canonical form. First a keymaps line describing the
              currently defined modifier combinations is printed. Then
              for each key a row with a column for each modifier
              combination is printed. For example, if the current keymap
              in use uses seven modifiers, every row will have seven
              action code columns. This format can be useful for example
              to programs that post-process the output of dumpkeys.

       -Sshape  --shape=shape
              Available shapes:

              2 default output.

              4 one line for each keycode.

              8 one line for each (modifier,keycode) pair.

              16 one line for each keycode until 1st hole.

       -1 --separate-lines
              This forces dumpkeys to write one line per
              (modifier,keycode) pair. It prefixes the word plain for
              plain keycodes.

       -t --funcs-only
              When this option is given, dumpkeys prints only the
              function key string definitions. Normally dumpkeys prints
              both the key bindings and the string definitions.

       -k --keys-only
              When this option is given, dumpkeys prints only the key
              bindings. Normally dumpkeys prints both the key bindings
              and the string definitions.

       -d --compose-only
              When this option is given, dumpkeys prints only the
              compose key combinations.  This option is available only
              if your kernel has compose key support.

       -ccharset  --charset=charset
              This instructs dumpkeys to interpret character code values
              according to the specified character set. This affects
              only the translation of character code values to symbolic
              names. Valid values for charset currently are iso-8859-X,
              Where X is a digit in 1-9.  If no charset is specified,
              iso-8859-1 is used as a default.  This option produces an
              output line `charset "iso-8859-X"', telling loadkeys how
              to interpret the keymap. (For example, "division" is 0xf7
              in iso-8859-1 but 0xba in iso-8859-8.)

       -Cdev  --console=dev
              The affected console device can be specified using the -C
              (or --console ) option. This option supports exactly one
              device name.

       -v --verbose
              Turn on verbose output.

       -V --version
              Prints version number and exits.

FILES         top

       @DATADIR@/keymaps
              The recommended directory for keytable files.

SEE ALSO         top

       loadkeys(1), keymaps(5)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the kbd (Linux keyboard tools) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.kbd-project.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this
       manual page, send it to kbd@lists.altlinux.org.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/legionus/kbd.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-13.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

kbd                            1 Sep 1993                    DUMPKEYS(1)

Pages that refer to this page: dumpkeys(1)loadkeys(1)showkey(1)unicode_start(1)ioctl_console(2)keymaps(5)setkeycodes(8)