I know nothing, but in _my_ , tparm() normally has ten arguments, not three. If this is very old code, then defining __10_10_COMPAT_CODE might help. "/usr/include/term.h": [...] #ifdef __10_10_COMPAT_CODE /* * The old tparm() API prototype is present only for backward compatibility. * It wil not be available in future releases. */ extern char *tparm __((char *, ...)); #else extern char *tparm __((char *, long, long, long, long, \ long, long, long, long, long)); #endif /* __10_10_COMPAT_CODE */ [...] (But modernizing the code might be a better idea.)