Manual Pages  — STRFILE

strfile, unstr – create a random access file for storing strings

SYNOPSIS DESCRIPTION FILES SEE ALSO HISTORY

strfile [-Ciorsx] [-c char] source_file [output_file]
unstr source_file

The strfile utility reads a file containing groups of lines separated by a line containing a single percent ‘%’ sign and creates a data file which contains a header structure and a table of file offsets for each group of lines. This allows random access of the strings.

The output file, if not specified on the command line, is named source_file .dat.

The options are as follows:

-C
	Flag the file as containing comments. This option cases the STR_COMMENTS bit in the header str_flags field to be set. Comments are designated by two delimiter characters at the beginning of the line, though strfile does not give any special treatment to comment lines.
-c char
	Change the delimiting character from the percent sign to char.
-i
	Ignore case when ordering the strings.
-o
	Order the strings in alphabetical order. The offset table will be sorted in the alphabetical order of the groups of lines referenced. Any initial non-alphanumeric characters are ignored. This option causes the STR_ORDERED bit in the header str_flags field to be set.
-r
	Randomize access to the strings. Entries in the offset table will be randomly ordered. This option causes the STR_RANDOM bit in the header str_flags field to be set.
-s
	Run silently; do not give a summary message when finished.
-x
	Note that each alphabetic character in the groups of lines is rotated 13 positions in a simple caesar cypher. This option causes the STR_ROTATED bit in the header str_flags field to be set.

The format of the header is:

#define VERSION 1
uint32_t        str_version;    /* version number */
uint32_t        str_numstr;     /* # of strings in the file */
uint32_t        str_longlen;    /* length of longest string */
uint32_t        str_shortlen;   /* length of shortest string */
#define STR_RANDOM      0x1     /* randomized pointers */
#define STR_ORDERED     0x2     /* ordered pointers */
#define STR_ROTATED     0x4     /* rot-13'd text */
#define STR_COMMENTS    0x8     /* embedded comments */
uint32_t        str_flags;      /* bit field for flags */
char            str_delim;      /* delimiting character */

All fields are written in network byte order.

The purpose of unstr is to undo the work of strfile. It prints out the strings contained in the file source_file in the order that they are listed in the header file source_file .dat to standard output. It is possible to create sorted versions of input files by using -o when strfile is run and then using unstr to dump them out in the table order.

strfile.dat
	default output file.

The strfile utility first appeared in BSD 4.4 .