Why does terminfo disagree with read?

Question

I'm using xterm. If I type infocmp $TERM | grep end, I see that kend=\EOF. However, if I type read, and then the End key, I see that the sequence \E[F is generated. This seems to be a problem with other keys, too.

Surely the values should be identical??

Answer 1

The terminal can be set on a special mode to send keystrokes from the keypad. You can set that mode by running tput smkx and unset it by tput rmkx.