NAME

sccs-val, val - validate an SCCS file

SYNOPSIS

/usr/ccs/bin/val -

/usr/ccs/bin/val 
[-T] [-s
] [-m 
name
] [-r
sid
] [-v]


    [-y 
type] [
-X
extended-options] [
-N
bulk-spec] 
s.filename ...

DESCRIPTION

The val utility determines if the specified s.files meet the characteristics specified by the indicated arguments.

val has a special argument, `−', which reads the standard input until the end-of-file condition is detected. Each line read is independently processed as if it were a command line argument list.

If a directory name is used in place of the s.filename command line argument, the val command applies to all s.files in that directory. Unreadable s.files produce an error; processing continues with the next file (if any).

val generates diagnostic messages on the standard output for each command line and file processed and also returns a single 8−bit code upon exit as described below.

The 8-bit code returned by val is a disjunction of the possible errors, that is, it can be interpreted as a bit string where (moving from left to right) the bits set are interpreted as follows:

bit 0 (value 128) = missing file argument
bit 1 (value  64) = unknown or duplicate option
bit 2 (value  32) = corrupted s.file
bit 3 (value  16) = can not open file or file not in s.file format
bit 4 (value   8) = the SCCS delta ID (SID) is invalid or ambiguous
bit 5 (value   4) = the SID does not exist
bit 6 (value   2) = mismatch between %Y% and -y argument
bit 7 (value   1) = mismatch between %M% and -m argument

val can process two or more files on a given command line, and in turn can process multiple command lines (when reading the standard input). In these cases, an aggregate code is returned which is the logical OR of the codes generated for each command line and file processed.

OPTIONS

The following options are supported:

-h

Check SID specific checksums that are available with SCCS v6 history files. This may slow down the process significantly in case that there are many deltas in a SCCS history file.

-m name

Compares name with the %M% ID keyword in the s.file.

-rsid

Checks to see if the indicated SID is ambiguous, invalid, or absent from the s.file.

-s

Silent. Suppresses the normal error or warning messages.

-v

Check the version of the SCCS history file and print it. No other checks except for the magic number are attempted in case that -v has been specified.

This option is a SCHILY extension that does not exist in historic sccs implementations.

-y type

Compares type with the %Y% ID keyword.

-Nbulk-spec

Processes a bulk of SCCS history files. This option allows to do an efficient mass processing of SCCS history files.

The bulk-spec parameter is composed from an optional list of flag parameters followed by an optional path specifier.

The following flag types are supported:

none

The following path specifier types are supported:

-N: The file name parameters to the val command are not s.filename files but the names of the g-files. The s.filename names are automatically derived from the g-file names by prepending s. to the last path name component. Both, s.filename and the g-file are in the same directory.
-Ns.: The file name parameters to the val command are s.filename files. The the g-files names are automatically derived by removing s. from the beginning of last path name component of the s.filename. Both, s.filename and the g-file are in the same directory.
-Ndir: The file name parameters to the val command are not s.filename files but the names of the g-files. The s.filename names are put into directory dir, the names are automatically derived from the g-file names by prepending dir/s. to the last path name component.
-Ndir/s.: The file name parameters to the val command are s.filename files in directory dir. The the g-files names are automatically derived by removing dir/s. from the beginning of last path name component of the s.filename.

A typical value for dir is SCCS.

In order to overcome the limited number of exec(2) arguments, it is recommended to use `−' as the file name parameter for val(1) and to send a list of path names to stdin.

This option is a SCHILY extension that does not exist in historic sccs implementations.

-T: Trace. Print extra debug messages. This disables the silent mode. When in debug mode, extra tests are enabled for:

statistics: The statistics line in the SCCS history file is written but not used. This is why this test is only enabled in debug mode and why a defective statistics line does not affect the exit code. The test still only checks for semantic correctness but not for correct values (e.g. whether the number of inserted lines is correct).
time stamps: The time stamps in the SCCS history file are only used when a cut-off time was specified. This test checks for monotonic growing time stamps. A warning is issued if time stamps go backwards, but this does not affect the exit code.

For a complete consistency check, it is recommended to run val in debug mode to check for all problems.

This option is a SCHILY extension that does not exist in historic sccs implementations.

-Xextended-options

Specify extended options. The argument extended-options may be a comma separated list of extended option names.

The following extended options are supported, they may be abbreviated as long ad the abbreviation is still unique. Options with parameter may not be abbreviated.

0: When reading filenames from stdin, triggered by a file name argument `-', the filename separator is a null byte instead of a newline. This allows to use long lists with arbitrary filenames.
help: Print a short online help for available options.

The -X option is a SCHILY extension that does not exist in historic sccs implementations.

-V

-version

--version

Prints the val version number string and exists.

This option is a SCHILY extension that does not exist in historic sccs implementations.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of val(1): LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.

SCCS_NO_HELP: If set, val(1) will not automatically call help(1) with the SCCS error code in order to print a more helpful error message. Scripts that depend on the exact error messages of SCCS commands should set the environment variable SCCS_NO_HELP and set LC_ALL=C.

EXIT STATUS

The following exit values are returned:

0: Successful completion.
1: An error occurred.

FILES

s.file: SCCS history file, see sccsfile(4).

ATTRIBUTES

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE	ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Availability	SUNWsprot
Interface Stability	Standard

DIAGNOSTICS

Use the SCCS help command for explanations (see sccs-help(1)).

AUTHORS

The SCCS suite was originally written by Marc J. Rochkind at Bell Labs in 1972. Release 4.0 of SCCS, introducing new versions of the programs admin(1), get(1), prt(1), and delta(1) was published on February 18, 1977; it introduced the new text based SCCS v4 history file format (previous SCCS releases used a binary history file format). The SCCS suite was later maintained by various people at AT&T and Sun Microsystems. Since 2006, the SCCS suite is maintained by Joerg Schilling.

SOURCE DOWNLOAD

A frequently updated source code for the SCCS suite is included in the schilytools project and may be retrieved from the schilytools project at Sourceforge at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/

The download directory is:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

Check for the schily-*.tar.bz2 archives.

Less frequently updated source code for the SCCS suite is at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/sccs/files/

Separate project informations for the SCCS project may be retrieved from:

http://sccs.sf.net