About This Manual

This manual describes several commands and utilities in the Digital UNIX system, including facilities for text manipulation, macro and program generation, and source file management.

Audience

The commands and utilities described in this manual are intended primarily for programmers, but some of them, particularly those described in Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, and Chapter 6, can be very useful for writers and other types of users as well. The manual assumes that you are a moderately experienced user of UNIX systems.

New and Changed Features

This manual has been revised to document all of the Programming Support Tools changes that are part of the current release.

One important change is the removal of the chapter on setld. The information on setld has been moved into the Guide to Preparing Product Kits manual.

Organization

This manual comprises eight chapters, a glossary, and an index. A brief description of the contents follows:

Chapter 1	Introduces the concept of regular expressions and describes the rules for forming them, and describes grep, a command that uses regular expressions for searching text files.
Chapter 2	Describes the awk command and its text-processing language.
Chapter 3	Describes the sed stream editor, a noninteractive tool for rapidly performing complex and repetitive editing tasks.
Chapter 4	Describes the lex and yacc programs for generating lexical analyzers and parsers for processing input to a program.
Chapter 5	Describes the m4 macro preprocessor and explains how to create macros that can be used in programs or in other files such as documentation source.
Chapter 6	Describes how to manage libraries of source files by using the Source Code Control System (SCCS) or the Revision Control System (RCS).
Chapter 7	Describes how to use the make utility to build and maintain complex programs and applications.

Related Documents

This manual is an adjunct to the Digital UNIX Programmer's Guide; neither manual requires that you have the other in order to use its contents.

The printed version of the Digital UNIX documentation set is color coded to help specific audiences quickly find the books that meet their needs. (You can order the printed documentation from Digital.) This color coding is reinforced with the use of an icon on the spines of books. The following list describes this convention:

Audience	Icon	Color Code
General users	G	Blue
System and network administrators	S	Red
Programmers	P	Purple
Device driver writers	D	Orange
Reference page users	R	Green

Some books in the documentation set help meet the needs of several audiences. For example, the information in some system books is also used by programmers. Keep this in mind when searching for information on specific topics.

The Documentation Overview, Glossary, and Master Index provides information on all of the books in the Digital UNIX documentation set.

Reader's Comments

Digital welcomes any comments and suggestions you have on this and other Digital UNIX manuals.

You can send your comments in the following ways:

• Fax: 603-881-0120 Attn: UEG Publications, ZK03-3/Y32

• Internet electronic mail: readers_comment@zk3.dec.com

  A Reader's Comment form is located on your system in the following location:

  /usr/doc/readers_comment.txt
  

• Mail:

  Digital Equipment Corporation
  UEG Publications Manager
  ZK03-3/Y32
  110 Spit Brook Road
  Nashua, NH 03062-9987

  A Reader's Comment form is located in the back of each printed manual. The form is postage paid if you mail it in the United States.

Please include the following information along with your comments:

• The full title of the book and the order number. (The order number is printed on the title page of this book and on its back cover.)

• The section numbers and page numbers of the information on which you are commenting.

• The version of Digital UNIX that you are using.

• If known, the type of processor that is running the Digital UNIX software.

The Digital UNIX Publications group cannot respond to system problems or technical support inquiries. Please address technical questions to your local system vendor or to the appropriate Digital technical support office. Information provided with the software media explains how to send problem reports to Digital.

Conventions

The following typographical conventions are used in this manual:

% $	A percent sign represents the C shell system prompt. A dollar sign represents the system prompt for the Bourne and Korn shells.
#	A number sign represents the superuser prompt.
% cat	Boldface type in interactive examples indicates typed user input.
file	Italic (slanted) type indicates variable values, placeholders, and function argument names.
[ | ] { | }	In syntax definitions, brackets indicate items that are optional and braces indicate items that are required. Vertical bars separating items inside brackets or braces indicate that you choose one item from among those listed.
. . .	In syntax definitions, a horizontal ellipsis indicates that the preceding item can be repeated one or more times.
cat(1)	A cross-reference to a reference page includes the appropriate section number in parentheses. For example, cat(1) indicates that you can find information on the cat command in Section 1 of the reference pages.
[Return]	In an example, a key name enclosed in a box indicates that you press that key.
Ctrl/x	This symbol indicates that you hold down the first named key while pressing the key or mouse button that follows the slash. In examples, this key combination is enclosed in a box (for example, [Ctrl/C]).