intro(1) CLIX intro(1)
NAME
intro - Introduction to general user commands and application programs
DESCRIPTION
This section describes commands available to general users of the CLIX
operating system.
Many of the commands are UNIX System V commands that have been modified
for use with the CLIX operating system; the remainder are CLIX-specific
commands.
Command Syntax
Unless otherwise noted, commands described in the SYNOPSIS section of a
reference manual entry accept flags and other arguments according to the
following syntax:
name [-flag ... ] [cmdarg ... ]
Syntax elements are described as follows:
[ ] Indicates an optional flag or cmdarg.
... Indicates multiple occurrences of the flag or cmdarg.
name The name of an executable file (a command or application program).
flag A flag that alters the default behavior of a command or application
program; always preceded by a minus (-). May be in one of two
forms:
noargletter ...
argletter optarg [, ... ]
noargletter is a letter representing a flag, without a following
flag-argument. More than one noargletter flag can be grouped after
one -.
argletter is a letter representing a flag that requires a flag-
argument.
optarg is a flag-argument (character string) that satisfies a
preceding argletter.
Note that groups of optargs following an argletter must be
separated by commas, or separated by white space and quoted.
cmdarg Pathname (or other command argument) not beginning with -, or - by
itself indicating stdin.
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Command Syntax Rules
Command syntax rules may not be followed by all current commands, but the
more current commands do follow them. All shell procedures should use
getopts to parse positional parameters and to check for legal flags. The
getopts command supports rules 3-10; the command itself must enforce the
other rules.
1. Command names (name) must be between 2 and 9 characters long.
2. Command names must include only lowercase letters and digits.
3. Flag names (flag) must be one character long.
4. All flags must be preceded by a minus (-).
5. Flags with no arguments may be grouped after a single -.
6. The first flag-argument (optarg) following a flag must be preceded by
white space.
7. Flag-arguments cannot be optional.
8. Groups of flag-arguments following a flag must either be separated by
commas, or separated by white space and quoted (for example, -o
xxx,z,yy or -o "xxx z yy").
9. All flags must precede operands (cmdarg) on the command line.
10. A double minus (--) may be used to indicate the end of the flags.
11. The order of the flags relative to one another should not matter.
12. The relative order of the operands (cmdarg) may affect their
significance in ways determined by the command with which they appear.
13. A - preceded and followed by white space should only be used to
represent stdin.
CAUTIONS
Some commands produce unexpected results when processing files containing
null characters. These commands often treat text input lines as strings,
and therefore become confused when encountering a null character (the
string terminator) within a line.
DIAGNOSTICS
At termination, each command returns two bytes of status - one supplied by
the system that gives the cause for termination, and (in the case of
``normal'' termination) one supplied by the program (see wait(2) and
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exit(2). The former byte is 0 for normal termination; the latter is
customarily 0 for successful execution, and nonzero to indicate troubles
such as erroneous parameters or bad or inaccessible data. The latter byte
is called ``exit code'', ``exit status'', or ``return code'', and is
described only where special conventions are involved.
RELATED INFORMATION
Commands: getopts(1)
Functions: exit(2), wait(2), getopt(3)
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