If no input files are specified, the standard input is read. In addition, if a filename of - is given, the standard input is inserted at that point.
If the -t flag is specified, then an ASCII TAB character separates key from data, rather than a colon character.
If the -n flag is specified, then keys are not extracted from the input, so that all tokens pass through unchanged, with comments and whitespace still being reduced to the minimum required for unambiguous tokens.
The -t and -n flags have no effect when processing mailing lists.
Postmaster: hustead # Ted Hustead, jr.
UUCP-Postmasters: tron, chongo # namei contacts
yamato # kremvax contact
tron: tron@namei.uucp (Ronald S. Karr)
yamato: yamato@kremvax.ussr.comm (Yamato T. Yankelovich)
chongo: chongo@eek.uts.amdahl.com (Landon Curt Noll)
then the command mkline aliases will produce:
Postmaster:hustead UUCP-Postmasters:tron,chongo yamato tron:tron@namei.uucp yamato:yamato@kremvax.ussr.comm chongo:chongo@eek.uts.amdahl.com
As an example of using mkline to compress mailing lists, consider the mailing list:
tron@namei.uucp,tron@uts.amdahl.com # Ronald S. Karr yamato@kremvax.ussr.comm # Yamato T. Yankelovich chongo@eek.uts.amdahl.com # Landon Curt Noll Wilt . (the Stilt) Chamberlain@NBA.US # RFC822 doc example
The command mkline -l applied to this list will produce:
tron@namei.uucp tron@uts.amdahl.com yamato@kremvax.ussr.comm chongo@eek.uts.amdahl.com Wilt.Chamberlain@NBA.US