Re: CVS update: MODIFIED: src ...

[Derek Robert Price]

Larry Jones wrote:

> Derek Robert Price writes:
>  
>
> > Maybe.  I don't recall precisely and I might be recalling my regexp 
> > syntax.  I'm going through a few other man pages now, but I can't find 
> > any good examples of either case.  Can you name a few good examples or 
> > some standard I could look at?
> >    
>
> On my system (one of the BSDs), the synopses for ar and tar are:
>
>         ar [-]{dmpqrtx}[abcilosuvV] [membername] archive files...
>
>         tar [-]{crtux}[befmopvwBHLPX] [tarfile] [blocksize] file1 [file2...]
>
> and the man page for lpc uses {} extensively in the syntax of the
> subcommands.  The Single Unix Specification's Utility Conventions don't
> seem to mention the issue, the only option they provide is to have a
> separate syntax line for each required option and that is what they do
> for their ar and pax (their replacement for tar) man pages.  I don't
> recall ever seeing parentheses used instead.
>  

I think what I was probably thinking of as BNF, my usual fallback for 
usage specs.  For lack of other input - I've been through at least a 
hundred man and info pages now without finding any examples, I'm using 
{}.  We can change it later if anything else comes to light.

Incidentally, usages specifications do not seem to be addressed by the 
GNU coding standards, either.  I did find an lpc man page on the net 
similar to what you described, but even the tar, pax, ar, and lpc on my 
system only use the multiple invocation list descriptions.  That might 
be the way to go, but I think even that would get messy in this instance.

Derek

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