Tech Arsenal 1/Tech Arsenal (Arsenal Computer).ISO/tek-01/ohlutil.zip/README

Text File | 1990-06-22 | 4KB | 82 lines

This is the GNU file manipulation utilities package.  Most of these
programs have significant advantages over their Unix counterparts,
such as greater speed or additional flexibility.

Changes from release 1.0 include some bug fixes, enhancements, and
changes for POSIX conformance, including the addition of two programs
invented by the POSIX committee.  Changes from release 1.1 are an
important bug fix for cp on systems that do not have the ftruncate
system call.  Changes from release 1.2 are the addition of a program
to print files backwards and a program to install files, more bug
fixes and POSIX and ANSI C changes, support for 16 bit machines, and
backup file creation options.

The fileutils are intended to be POSIX compliant (with BSD and other
extensions), like the rest of the GNU system.  They are not all quite
there yet; however, the POSIX shell and utilities standard (1003.2)
has not been finalized, either.  They presently don't support
internationalization features, since none of the C libraries that I
have access to do.  (The GNU C library will, but isn't finished.)

The documentation for these programs is not finished yet, and needs to
be rewritten.  However, most of them accept descriptive long-named
options in addition to Unix-style short-named options, which should
help you figure out their additional features.  Giving a `-h' option
(or any invalid option) will produce a usage message.  Some of the
programs also have explanatory comments at the top of the source code.

The ls, dir, and vdir commands are all separate executables instead of
one program that checks argv[0] because people often rename these
programs to things like gls, gnuls, l, etc., and renaming a program
file shouldn't affect how it operates, so that people can get the
behavior they want with whatever name they want.

The GNU ls with the -s option, and at the top of long listings of
directories, reports file sizes in units of 512 bytes by default, as
required by POSIX.  The GNU du does the same thing, for consistency.
The GNU ls and du both have a -k option to make them report sizes in
kilobytes instead.

The GNU tail command has no -r option (print backwards).  Reversing a
file is really a different job from printing the end of a file; the
BSD tail can get away with kludging it in because of its limited size
buffer.  A more versatile way than tail -r to reverse files is the
`tac' command included in this package.

The GNU rm, like every other program that uses getopt, lets you use the
"--" option to indicate that all following arguments are non-options.
To remove a file called "-f", you could either
    rm -- -f
or
    rm ./-f
The Unix rm's use of "-" for this purpose predates the development of
the getopt standard syntax.

The GNU cp, mv, and ln commands can now make backups of files that
they are about to overwrite or remove.  They make backups only when
the -b (+backup) option is given.

The type of backups made can be set with the VERSION_CONTROL
environment variable, which can be overridden by the -V
(+version-control) option.  If VERSION_CONTROL is not set and -V
(+version-control) is not given, the default backup type is
`existing'.

The value of VERSION_CONTROL and the argument to -V (+version-control)
is like GNU Emacs' `version-control' variable; it also accepts
synonyms that are more descriptive.  The valid values are (unique
abbreviations are accepted):

t or numbered        Always make numbered backups.
nil or existing        Make numbered backups of files that already
            have them, simple backups of the others.
never or simple        Always make simple backups.

The suffix used for making simple backup files can be set with the
SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX environment variable, which can be overridden by
the -S (+suffix) option.  If neither of those is given, the default is
`~', as it is in Emacs.

Suggestions and bug reports for these programs should be mailed to
[e-mail].