The terminal emulation used decides on what the keys mean. Please note that there are keys, the information of which does not go to the terminal emulation because the keys are caught in advance. Other terminal emulations provide different key sequences. To even out the nonsense, there is a so-called terminfo file in the Unix operating systems. This file contains rules for every terminal emulation which is used at the workstation how to compose the original information from the key sequences.
Curses passes on the information to pedit , which Curses receives from terminfo .
Curses receives from Terminfo. This means that a row of single characters has been passed on by Curses to pedit . Here is the character which is connected to the key if there is such a character. If the key which was pressed has a function in pedit , the name of the function is the output on the screen. The persons who are responsible for the maintenance of your workstation can change the terminfo file and, by this means, supply missing combinations of escape sequences or correct mismatches between escape sequences and function keys.