editf(1) manual page

NAME

editf - check out a file for editing

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of Kansas University not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission. Kansas University makes no representations about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

DESCRIPTION

editf checks out a single file or several files from the Version Database (VDB) into their working directory for editing. Files may only be checked out into the group in which they belong.

OPTIONS

-r[rev]: retrieves the latest revision whose number is less than or equal to rev. If rev indicates a branch rather than a revision, the latest revision on that branch is retrieved. If rev is omitted, the revision specified in the slist is checked out. If rev is $, editf determines the revision number from keyword values in the working file. Otherwise, a revision is composed of one or more numeric or symbolic fields separated by periods. The numeric equivalent of a symbolic field is specified with the -n option of the commands deltaf(1), newf(1), and precs(1).
-f: forces the overwriting of the working file; useful in connection with -q. See also FILE MODES below.
-kkv: Generate keyword strings using the default form, e.g. $Revision: 1.1.6.2 $ for the Revision keyword. This is the default.
-kk: Generate only keyword names in keyword strings; omit their values. See KEYWORD SUBSTITUTION below. For example, for the Revision keyword, generate the string $Revision$ instead of $Revision: 1.1.6.2 $. This option is useful to ignore differences due to keyword substitution when comparing different revisions of a file.
-ko: Generate the old keyword string, present in the working file just before it was checked in. For example, for the Revision keyword, generate the string $Revision: 1.1 $ instead of $Revision: 1.1.6.2 $ if that is how the string appeared when the file was checked in. This can be useful for binary file formats that cannot tolerate any changes to substrings that happen to take the form of keyword strings.
-kv: Generate only keyword values for keyword strings. For example, for the Revision keyword, generate the string 1.1.6.2 instead of $Revision: 1.1.6.2 $. This can help generate files in programming languages where it is hard to strip keyword delimiters like $Revision: $ from a string. However, further keyword substitution cannot be performed once the keyword names are removed, so this option should be used with care.
-q: quiet mode; diagnostics are not printed.
-I: interactive mode; the user is prompted and questioned even if the standard input is not a terminal.
-ddate: retrieves the latest revision on the selected branch whose checkin date/time is less than or equal to date. The date and time may be given in free format. The time zone LT stands for local time; other common time zone names are understood. For example, the following dates are equivalent if local time is January 11, 1990, 8pm Pacific Standard Time, eight hours west of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC):

8:00 pm lt
4:00 AM, Jan. 12, 1990 note: default is UTC
1990/01/12 04:00:00 PRECS date format
Thu Jan 11 20:00:00 1990 LT output of ctime(3) + LT
Thu Jan 11 20:00:00 PST 1990 output of date(1)
Fri Jan 12 04:00:00 GMT 1990
Thu, 11 Jan 1990 20:00:00 -0800
Fri-JST, 1990, 1pm Jan 12
12-January-1990, 04:00-WET

Most fields in the date and time may be defaulted. The default time zone is UTC. The other defaults are determined in the order year, month, day, hour, minute, and second (most to least significant). At least one of these fields must be provided. For omitted fields that are of higher significance than the highest provided field, the time zone's current values are assumed. For all other omitted fields, the lowest possible values are assumed. For example, the date 20, 10:30 defaults to 10:30:00 UTC of the 20th of the UTC time zone's current month and year. The date/time must be quoted if it contains spaces.

-M: Set the modification time on the new working file to be the date of the retrieved revision. Use this option with care; it can confuse make(1).
-sstate: retrieves the latest revision on the selected branch whose state is set to state.
-w[login]: retrieves the latest revision on the selected branch which was checked in by the user with login name login. If the argument login is omitted, the caller's login is assumed.
-Vn: Emulate RCS version n, where n may be 3, 4, or 5. This may be useful when interchanging RCS files with others who are running older versions of RCS. To see which version of RCS your correspondents are running, have them invoke precslog on an RCS file; if none of the first few lines of output contain the string branch: it is version 3; if the dates' years have just two digits, it is version 4; otherwise, it is version 5. An RCS file generated while emulating version 3 will lose its default branch. An RCS revision generated while emulating version 4 or earlier will have a timestamp that is off by up to 13 hours. A revision extracted while emulating version 4 or earlier will contain dates of the form instead of and may also contain different white space in the substitution for $Log$.

KEYWORD SUBSTITUTION

Strings of the form $keyword$ and $keyword:. . .$ embedded in the text are replaced with strings of the form $keyword:value$ where keyword and value are pairs listed below. Keywords may be embedded in literal strings or comments to identify a revision.

Initially, the user enters strings of the form $keyword$. On checkout, editf replaces these strings with strings of the form $keyword:value$. If a revision containing strings of the latter form is checked back in, the value fields will be replaced during the next checkout. Thus, the keyword values are automatically updated on checkout. This automatic substitution can be modified by the -k options.

Keywords and their corresponding values:

$Author$: The login name of the user who checked in the revision.
$Date$: The date and time (UTC) the revision was checked in.
$Header$: A standard header containing the full pathname of the PRECS file, the revision number, the date (UTC), the author, the state, and the locker (if locked).
$Id$: Same as $Header$, except that the PRECS filename is without a path.
$Log$: The log message supplied during checkin, preceded by a header containing the PRECS filename, the revision number, the author, and the date (UTC). Existing log messages are not replaced. Instead, the new log message is inserted after $Log:. . .$. This is useful for accumulating a complete change log in a source file.
$RCSfile$: The name of the PRECS file without a path.
$Revision$: The revision number assigned to the revision.
$Source$: The full pathname of the PRECS file.
$State$: The state assigned to the revision with the -s option of precs(1) , newf(1) or deltaf(1).

FILE MODES

The working file is given read permissions only. No modifications to the file may be made, and the file cannot be checked back into the Version Database.

If a file with the name of the working file exists already and has write permission, editf aborts the checkout, asking beforehand if possible. If the existing working file is not writable or -f is given, the working file is deleted without asking.

RESTRICTIONS

Links to the RCS and working files are not preserved.

There is no way to selectively suppress the expansion of keywords, except by writing them differently. In nroff and troff, this is done by embedding the null-character \& into the keyword.

The -d option sometimes gets confused, and accepts no date before 1970.

FILES

editf accesses files much as deltaf(1) does, except that it does not need to read the working file.

ENVIRONMENT

RCSINIT: options prepended to the argument list, separated by spaces. See getf(1) for details.

DIAGNOSTICS

The PRECS pathname, the working pathname, and the revision number retrieved are written to the diagnostic output. The exit status is zero if and only if all operations were successful.

IDENTIFICATION

Author: Robert W. Hill $Id: precs/docs:editf.1 1.2 $