MAKEDBM

Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
Updated: 17 September 1985
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

makedbm - make a yellow pages dbm file

SYNOPSIS

makedbm [ -i yp_input_file ] [ -o yp_output_name ] [ -d yp_domain_name ] [ -m yp_master_name ] infile outfile
makedbm [ -u dbmfilename ]

DESCRIPTION

makedbm takes infile and converts it to a pair of files in dbm(3X) format, namely outfile.pag and outfile.dir. Each line of the input file is converted to a single dbm record. All characters up to the first tab or space form the key, and the rest of the line is the data. If a line ends with \, then the data for that record is continued on to the next line. It is left for the clients of the yellow pages to interpret #; makedbm does not itself treat it as a comment character. infile can be -, in which case standard input is read.

makedbm is meant to be used in generating dbm files for the yellow pages, and it generates a special entry with the key yp_last_modified, which is the date of infile (or the current time, if infile is -).

OPTIONS

-i: Create a special entry with the key yp_input_file.
-o: Create a special entry with the key yp_output_name.
-d: Create a special entry with the key yp_domain_name.
-m: Create a special entry with the key yp_master_name. If no master host name is specified, yp_master_name will be set to the local host name.
-u: Undo a dbm file. That is, print out a dbm file one entry per line, with a single space separating keys from values.

EXAMPLE

It is easy to write shell scripts to convert standard files such as /etc/passwd to the key value form used by makedbm. For example,

: #!/bin/awk -f BEGIN { FS = ":"; OFS = "\t"; } { print $1, $0 }

takes the /etc/passwd file and converts it to a form that can be read by makedbm to make the yellow pages file passwd.byname. That is, the key is a username, and the value is the remaining line in the /etc/passwd file.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 13:51:55 GMT, September 25, 2024