man synopsis standard compliance Post: 302149321

Sponsored Content

Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers man synopsis standard compliance Post 302149321 by vkleban on Wednesday 5th of December 2007 03:35:02 PM

12-05-2007

Registered User

man synopsis standard compliance

In different online sources, I found bits and pieces of information about those square and angular brackets and pipes. From what I have read, I can conclude it looks like this:

1. Options outside any brackets are mandatory
2. Options inside these < .. > are mandatory too
3. Options inside [ .. ] are optional
4. | works like an "exclusive or", separating options inside the brackets they are placed (or outside in case they are not inside any brackets).
5. Options listed with no separators with '-' in front (ex: -abcd) can be used in any combination with each other (i.e. "inclusive or")

First problem is that I'm not even sure I am correct here. Second, I cannot convince developers (I am a tester) to be compliant with any standard in user's manual and in help, since I cannot find any standard. Our project has several dozens of command line utilities each with elaborate parameter strings. The developers make them even more confusing by using '|' both as exclusive and inclusive or. In our latest release I realized that those confuse even me, so I'm concerned about our clients. Is there any standard to which man synopsis with those brackets and pipes is compliant? Is there any convincing source online, where that standard is carefully described?

Last edited by vkleban; 12-05-2007 at 05:33 PM..

vkleban

View Public Profile for vkleban

Find all posts by vkleban

5 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

sudo & Sox compliance

Hello, I am trying to convince my boss to stop allowing our users to login as root (superuser). Currently our users login to our unix server with their own account, then as needed, they will do an su and put in the root password. This scares me, for a bunch of reasons. Mainly, one is that we...

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

standard error to standard out question

Hi there how can i get the result of a command to not give me its error. For example, on certain systems the 'zfs' command below is not available, but this is fine becaues I am testing against $? so i dont want to see the message " command not found" Ive tried outputting to /dev/null 2>&1 to no...

3. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Redirect Standard output and standard error into spreadsheet

Hey, I'm completely new at this and I was wondering if there is a way that I would be able to redirect the log files in a directories standard output and standard error into and excel spreadsheet in anyway? Please remember don't use too advanced of terminology as I just started using shell...

4. HP-UX

Password compliance setting

I need to set password compliance for some servers in my company. However, the requirements are that we need to set different password policies for 3 different user groups within the company. These are : System Users: i.e root, etc Batch/Application Users: oracle, bscs, etc Standard User:...

5. OS X (Apple)

POSIX compliance...

Thanks to all you guys about posix compliance I have learnt an enormous amount over the last few days. I have written a program that is an Egg Timer with simple animation. I now realise how sophisticated 'bash' is compared to full posix compliance. The code below has passed all of the tests from...

LEARN ABOUT SUSE

pilot-read-screenshot

pilot-read-screens(1)						    PILOT-LINK						     pilot-read-screens(1)

NAME

       pilot-read-screenshot - Read screenshots from Palm (ScreenShotDB).

SECTION

       pilot-link: Userland conduits

SYNOPSIS

	pilot-read-screenshot [-p|--port <port>] [--version] [-?|--help] [--usage] [-q|--quiet] [-t|--type [ppm|png]]

DESCRIPTION

       ScreenShot is a Palm-compatible application for OS4 and OS5.

       ScreenShot  captures  the  current  screen  of any application. All color and grayscale modes, as well as extended screen sizes and virtual
       Graffiti areas are supported. Also exports as JPG/GIF/BMP to card.

       For more information on ScreenShot, go to http://linkesoft.com/screenshot/

OPTIONS

   pilot-read-screenshot option
			       -t,
			       --type
			       [ppm|png]

       Specify picture output type (ppm or png)

   Conduit Options
			       -p, --port port

       Use device file port to communicate with the Palm handheld. If this is not specified, pilot-read-screenshot will look  for  the	$PILOTPORT
       environment variable. If neither are found or supplied,	pilot-read-screenshot  will print the usage information.

			       -q,
			       --quiet

       Suppress 'Hit HotSync button' message

			       -v, --version

       Display version of pilot-read-screenshot  and exit without connecting.

   Help Options
			       -h, --help

       Display the help synopsis for pilot-read-screenshot and exit without connecting.

			       --usage

       Display a brief usage message and exit without connecting.

AUTHOR

	pilot-read-screenshot was originally written by Angus Ainslie <angusa at deltatee.com >

       This manual page was written by Neil Williams <linux@codehelp.co.uk>

REPORTING BUGS

       We  have  an online bug tracker. Using this is the only way to ensure that your bugs are recorded and that we can track them until they are
       resolved or closed. Reporting bugs via email, while easy, is not very useful in terms of  accountability.  Please  point  your  browser	to
       http://bugs.pilot-link.org: http://bugs.pilot-link.org and report your bugs and issues there.

COPYRIGHT

       This  program  is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
       the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

       This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY	WARRANTY;  without  even  the  implied	warranty  of  MER-
       CHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

       You  should  have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
       Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

SEE ALSO

	pilot-link(7)

0.12.5							      Copyright 1996-2007 FSF					     pilot-read-screens(1)