TextTools - General Features
Revised 1-Sep-97. Copyright (c) 1996-97 by Rune Berg. TextTools Freeware.
The programs
The documentation
THE PROGRAMS
The -v option
Every TextTools program can be invoked with the -v option, e.g.:
itabs -v
This makes the program print its copyright banner and a brief description
of usage and functionality, e.g.:
itabs v1.20 (BC, Win32, Aug 2 1997) - Copyright (c) 1996-97 by Rune Berg
usage: itabs [log logfile] [options] [infile] [to outfile]
itabs copies infile to outfile, replacing every sequence
of spaces ending at a tab pos. by a real tab char.
options: -q Don't insert tabs inside double or single quotes
-l Only insert tabs in place of leading spaces
-nr Don't print report
-v This banner, exit
-nX Use X (2..128) spaces instead of the default 3
and then exit with return code 0 (success).
DOS end-of-file character
TextTools programs never print a DOS end-of-file character (Ctrl-Z, hex
1a) when producing an output file, even if the input file was terminated
by such a character. With two exceptions:
-
create, when invoked with the -z option, prints a DOS end-of-file character
at the end of each created file.
-
eol, when invoked to convert a file from NL to CRNL, will preserve a DOS
end-of-file character if present
Return codes
Here's a more detailed explanation of the return codes of TextTools programs.
-
Return code 0 indicates success; i.e.
-
Return codes 1..99 indicates a warning; these are specific a each program
(and not all the programs give return codes in this range). See each program's
Return Codes section.
-
Return codes 100 and up indicates an error:
-
100 : Internal error (i.e. bug) in TextTools program. (Email author at
once, supplying relevant details.)
-
101 : The program has run out of memory and could not complete its operation.
Only some of the programs (tsort, tuniq, tand, tjoin, last, middle, closure;
DOS versions) are likely to encounter this problem, which results from
the input data being too big.
-
102 : You invoked the program with an incorrect syntax, probably missing
a required argument or misspelling an option.
-
103 : (Not currently in use.)
-
104 : The program failed to open an input or output file specified on the
command line. You most likely specified an non-existing file, or misspelled
the file's name.
-
105 : The program encountered a problem reading from, or writing to, a
file. Possible reasons include: no more space on harddisk, corrupt file
system, etc.
-
106 : A few of the TextTools programs have internal tables of fixed sizes.
In extreme cases, these will go full, and the program exit with this code.
-
107 : You invoked a TextTools program specifying the same file name for
input and output. Can't have that.
-
108 : (Not currently in use.)
-
109 : The program read bad input data and cannot produce the desired output
data.
-
110 : The program failed to obtain some operating system service, e.g.
getting your system's current date or time.
Input line length
Most of the TextTools programs read text lines from an input file. The
maximum length of such lines is 255 characters, not counting (carriage
return and) newline.
THE DOCUMENTATION
Conventions used
Examples of command invokations are in a dark red monotype font, e.g.:
itabs -n5 myinput.txt to myoutput.txt
Examples of input or output data are shown in a dark green monotype font,
e.g.:
7787 'John Smith' London
End of document