tty(1)

tty1

Return user's terminal name

Usage

tty [-s]

Overview

The tty utility writes the name of the terminal attached to standard input to standard output. The name that is written is the string returned by ttyname(3).

If the standard input is not a terminal, the message “not a tty” is written.

The options are as follows:

-s

Don't write the terminal name; only the exit status is affected when this option is specified. The -s option is deprecated in favor of the “test -t 0” command.

Exit status

The tty utility exits 0 if the standard input is a terminal, 1 if the standard input is not a terminal, or >1 if an error occurred.

Releases

61 releases since OpenBSD 2.1; the text changed 8 times.

  1. 2.1–2.4
  2. 2.5
  3. 2.6
  4. 2.7–3.3
  5. 3.4–4.1
  6. 4.2–4.4
  7. 4.5–4.8
  8. 4.9–5.5
  9. 5.6–8.0

Standards

The tty utility is compliant with the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”) specification.

History

A tty command appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX.

From man 8.0-current-20261101 in OpenBSD 8.0-current (2026-11-01). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.