rcs: Misc common options
2.1.8 Misc common options
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Other common options are ‘-I’, ‘-q’, ‘-T’, ‘-V’, ‘-w’, ‘-x’.
-I
This option enables “interactive mode”. More precisely, it
*forces* interactive mode, whereby RCS commands believe that their
standard input is a terminal, normally a precondition for
displaying a prompt to receive input (such as a log message on
checkin). The intention of ‘-I’ is for scripting situations where
standard input is actually not a terminal but you know beforehand
(without prompting) that input is needed and you are ready to
provide it on standard input anyway.
-q
This option enables “quiet mode”. Commands work silently (unless
there is an error condition), and suppress warnings and prompts.
-T
This option controls how some commands (⇒ci, ⇒co,
⇒rcs, ⇒rcsclean) timestamp the RCS file. Normally,
RCS commands set the RCS file’s timestamp when modifying it in the
“natural” way (without taking any particular care). With ‘-T’, on
the other hand, the commands either preserve the timestamp (for
standalone lock/unlock operations), or use the timestamp of the
working file (for ci).
This can be useful if the RCS file is found in a makefile target’s
list of prerequisites (⇒(make)Rule Syntax), that is, if some
target should be rebuilt if the RCS file is newer than it. In that
case, you can do ‘rcs -u -T’, for example, to unlock a revision in
the RCS file without triggering a recompilation.
⇒Stamp resolution, for details on support for subsecond
resolution.
-V
Behave like ‘--version’, i.e., display command version information
and exit successfully. *NB*: This option is obsolete and its
*support will be removed* in some future release.
-VN
N specifies the RCS (major) version to emulate. Valid values for N
are: 3, 4, 5. Version 5 is the current version, so ‘-V5’ does
nothing special.
In versions prior to 5, RCS outputs ‘\t’ (tab, U+09) between the
‘:’ (colon) and the value (for keyword substitution) instead of
space, uses the RCS file ‘comment’ string to prefix each line in
the ‘Log’ expansion instead of computing it on the fly from the
input text, writes/reads localtime instead of UTC, and displays
slightly different output for rlog.
For version 4, the ‘Header’ expansion unconditionally includes
‘Locker: LOCKER’, as if the ‘kvl’ substitution mode were specified
(⇒Substitution mode option).
For version 3, the ‘Header’ expansion omits the directories from
the filename and says only ‘Locked’ instead of the state.
-wLOGIN
Some commands accept an option of the form ‘-wLOGIN’ to specify the
login name of the author of a revision, i.e., “who” is responsible.
-xSUFF
Specify SUFF as the slash-separated list of file name suffixes used
to recognize an RCS file. The default value is ‘,v/’, that is,
first try with ‘,v’ then try with an empty suffix.
This “basename search” occurs within (i.e., starting from the
beginning) the larger “directory search” loop, which comprises two
candidates: ‘d/RCS’ and ‘d’, where D is the directory component of
the working file name. For example, given the working file ‘a.c’
in the current directory, RCS tries, in order, these candidates:
./RCS/a.c,v
./RCS/a.c
./a.c,v
./a.c
Note that the last candidate is impossible (and is in fact
discarded), because the working and RCS files cannot have the same
name.
Info Catalog
rcs: minus-M
rcs: Common elements
rcs: Delim-separated list