This allows the cursor to automatically wrap to the beginning of the next line when it is at the rightmost position of a line and text is output. This option indicates that auto-wraparound should be allowed. This is equivalent to setting the vt100 resource activeIcon to ' true'. This option enables active icon support if that feature was compiled into xterm. This is equivalent to setting the vt100 resource activeIcon to ' false'. This option disables active icon support if that feature was compiled into xterm. This option indicates that xterm should do text cursor highlighting based on focus. By default, xterm displays a hollow text cursor whenever the focus is lost or the pointer leaves the window. This option indicates that xterm should always highlight the text cursor. This option causes the DECCOLM escape sequence to be recognized, and the xterm window will resize appropriately. Normally, the VT102 DECCOLM escape sequence that switches between 80 and 132 column mode is ignored. Print the version information for xterm, and exit. If no shell is specified, and the SHELL environment variable is undefined, xterm uses the Bourne Shell, /bin/sh. This pathname can be an absolute path or a relative path, and xterm will search the user's PATH environment variable for the specified shell if it cannot find it. This shell can be changed, however, by providing a parameter to xterm, after all other options, which specifies the pathname of a shell to run. When xterm runs, it normally checks the SHELL environment variable for which shell to run. The -version and -help options are interpreted even if xterm cannot open a display, and along with the -class option, are checked before all other options. If an option begins with a ' +' instead of a ' -', the option is restored to its default value.

Originally written in 1984 for the DEC VAXStation as a stand-alone program, xterm was quickly integrated into X, and today most X terminal emulators are variations of the original xterm code. Several instances of xterm can run at the same time within the same display, each one providing input and output for a shell or another process. Xterm is the standard terminal emulator of the X Window System, providing a command-line interface within a window.

Xterm vs uxterm