IDENT

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 1992/07/28
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NAME

ident - identify files

SYNOPSIS

ident [ -q ] [ file ... ]

DESCRIPTION

ident searches for all occurrences of the pattern $keyword:...$ in the named files or, if no files are named, the standard input.

These patterns are normally inserted automatically by the RCS command co(1), but can also be inserted manually. The option -q suppresses the warning given if there are no patterns in a file.

ident works on text files as well as object files and dumps. For example, if the C program in f.c contains

: #include <stdio.h>
static char const rcsid[] =

"$Id: f.c,v 5.2 1992/07/28 16:12:44 eggert Exp $";
int main() { return printf("%s\n", rcsid) == EOF; }

and f.c is compiled into f.o, then the command

: ident f.c f.o

will output


f.c:
    $Id: f.c,v 5.2 1992/07/28 16:12:44 eggert Exp $
f.o:
    $Id: f.c,v 5.2 1992/07/28 16:12:44 eggert Exp $

See co(1) for the list of keywords that it maintains. ident finds all instances of patterns that look like keyword strings, even if they are not actually keywords. This gives you information about nonstandard keywords like $XConsortium$.

If a C program defines a string like rcsid above but does not use it, lint(1) may complain, and some C compilers will optimize away the string. The most reliable solution is to have the program use the rcsid string, as shown in the example above.

IDENTIFICATION