INTRO(8-BSD)        RISC/os Reference Manual         INTRO(8-BSD)



NAME
     intro - introduction to BSD-based maintainence commands

DESCRIPTION
     The (8-BSD) commands in this section include BSD-based sys-
     tem maintenence and system administration commands.

   Manual Page Command Syntax
     Unless otherwise noted, commands described in the SYNOPSIS
     section of a manual page accept options and other arguments
     according to the following syntax and should be interpreted
     as explained below.

          name [-option...]  [cmdarg...]

     where:

     [ ]                 Surround an option or cmdarg that is not
                         required.

     ...                 Indicates multiple occurrences of the
                         option or cmdarg.

     name                The name of an executable file.

     option              (Always preceded by a ``-''.)
                         noargletter...  or,
                         argletter optarg[,...]

     noargletter         A single letter representing an option
                         without an option-argument.  Note that
                         more than one noargletter option can be
                         grouped after one ``-'' (Rule 5, below).

     argletter           A single letter representing an option
                         requiring an option-argument.

     optarg              An option-argument (character string)
                         satisfying a preceding argletter.  Note
                         that groups of optargs following an
                         argletter must be separated by commas,
                         or separated by white space and quoted
                         (Rule 8, below).

     cmdarg              Path name (or other command argument)
                         not beginning with ``-'', or ``-'' by
                         itself indicating the standard input.

   Command Syntax Standard:  Rules
     These command syntax rules are not followed by all current
     commands, but all new commands will obey them.  getopts(1)
     should be used by all shell procedures to parse positional



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     parameters and to check for legal options.  It supports
     Rules 3-10 below.  The enforcement of the other rules must
     be done by the command itself.

          1.   Command names (name above) must be between two and
               nine characters long.

          2.   Command names must include only lower-case letters
               and digits.

          3.   Option names (option above) must be one character
               long.

          4.   All options must be preceded by ``-''.

          5.   Options with no arguments may be grouped after a
               single ``-''.

          6.   The first option-argument (optarg above) following
               an option must be preceded by white space.

          7.   Option-arguments cannot be optional.

          8.   Groups of option-arguments following an option
               must either be separated by commas or separated by
               white space and quoted (e.g., -o xxx,z,yy or -o
               "xxx z yy").

          9.   All options must precede operands (cmdarg above)
               on the command line.

          10.  ``--'' may be used to indicate the end of the
               options.

          11.  The order of the options relative to one another
               should not matter.

          12.  The relative order of the operands (cmdarg above)
               may affect their significance in ways determined
               by the command with which they appear.

          13.  ``-'' preceded and followed by white space should
               only be used to mean standard input.

SEE ALSO
     getopts(1) in the User's Reference Manual.
     exit(2), wait(2), getopt(3C) in the Programmer's Reference
     Manual.







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DIAGNOSTICS
     Upon termination, each command returns two bytes of status,
     one supplied by the system and giving the cause for termina-
     tion, and (in the case of ``normal'' termination) one sup-
     plied by the program [see wait(2) and exit(2)].  The former
     byte is 0 for normal termination; the latter is customarily
     0 for successful execution and non-zero to indicate troubles
     such as erroneous parameters, or bad or inaccessible data.
     It is called variously ``exit code'', ``exit status'', or
     ``return code'', and is described only where special conven-
     tions are involved.

WARNINGS
     Some commands produce unexpected results when processing
     files containing null characters.  These commands often
     treat text input lines as strings and therefore become con-
     fused upon encountering a null character (the string termi-
     nator) within a line.





































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