Users of DACS Sun SPARC/SunOS/Solaris to 80x86 should be aware of three handy tools, which are included with the compiler systems. The tools offer searching, file difference listing, and directory listing facilities.
These tools mainly address users who are not comfortable using the UNIX counterparts of ls, find, grep, diff and regular expressions.
Opposed to the traditional UNIX style of single character options, these tools have long option names, which may be abbreviated just as long as they are unique.
Once you have access to the Ada compiler, you also have access to these tools (they are located in the compiler installation directory).
For usage, type
dir -help
sea -help
dif -help
In order to avoid having the shell expand wildcard characters, alternate wildcard characters are used in these tools. '@' means any string, and '%' means any single character.
For example, in order to dif all Ada files in two directories, you could type:
dir /my/first/dir/@.ada -execute "dif @f /my/other/dir/"
Note that the difference listings by default will list the differences side by side, a feature which is appreciated by many. The tool dif may naturally be invoked directly like:
dif file1 file2
Another practical use is to list files of certain characteristics:
dir -sub -only d
will list all directories recursively.
dir -only x
will list only executable files.
There are many possibilities, and the reader is referred to the help text for details.
Customer Quote:
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