# TextTools - General Features

#### Revised 1-Sep-97. Copyright (c) 1996-97 by Rune Berg. TextTools Freeware.

The programs

The -v option
DOS end-of-file character
Return codes
Input line length

The documentation

Conventions used

### THE PROGRAMS

#### The -v option

Every TextTools program can be invoked with the -v option, e.g.:

    itabs -v

This makes the program print its copyright banner and a brief description of usage and functionality, e.g.:

    itabs v1.20 (BC, Win32, Aug  2 1997) - Copyright (c) 1996-97 by Rune Berg

    usage: itabs [log logfile] [options] [infile] [to outfile]

    itabs copies infile to outfile, replacing every sequence
    of spaces ending at a tab pos. by a real tab char.

    options: -q   Don't insert tabs inside double or single quotes
             -l   Only insert tabs in place of leading spaces
             -nr  Don't print report
             -v   This banner, exit
             -nX  Use X (2..128) spaces instead of the default 3

and then exit with return code 0 (success).

#### DOS end-of-file character

TextTools programs never print a DOS end-of-file character (Ctrl-Z, hex 1a) when producing an output file, even if the input file was terminated by such a character. With two exceptions:

- create, when invoked with the -z option, prints a DOS end-of-file character at the end of each created file.
- eol, when invoked to convert a file from NL to CRNL, will preserve a DOS end-of-file character if present

#### Return codes

Here's a more detailed explanation of the return codes of TextTools programs.

- Return code 0 indicates success; i.e.
- Return codes 1..99 indicates a warning; these are specific a each program (and not all the programs give return codes in this range). See each program's Return Codes section.
- Return codes 100 and up indicates an error:

- 100 : Internal error (i.e. bug) in TextTools program. (Email author at once, supplying relevant details.)
- 101 : The program has run out of memory and could not complete its operation. Only some of the programs (tsort, tuniq, tand, tjoin, last, middle, closure; DOS versions) are likely to encounter this problem, which results from the input data being too big.
- 102 : You invoked the program with an incorrect syntax, probably missing a required argument or misspelling an option.
- 103 : (Not currently in use.)
- 104 : The program failed to open an input or output file specified on the command line. You most likely specified an non-existing file, or misspelled the file's name.
- 105 : The program encountered a problem reading from, or writing to, a file. Possible reasons include: no more space on harddisk, corrupt file system, etc.
- 106 : A few of the TextTools programs have internal tables of fixed sizes. In extreme cases, these will go full, and the program exit with this code.
- 107 : You invoked a TextTools program specifying the same file name for input and output. Can't have that.
- 108 : (Not currently in use.)

- 109 : The program read bad input data and cannot produce the desired output data.
- 110 : The program failed to obtain some operating system service, e.g. getting your system's current date or time.

### Input line length

Most of the TextTools programs read text lines from an input file. The maximum length of such lines is 255 characters, not counting (carriage return and) newline.

### THE DOCUMENTATION

#### Conventions used

Examples of command invokations are in a dark red monotype font, e.g.:

    itabs -n5 myinput.txt to myoutput.txt

Examples of input or output data are shown in a dark green monotype font, e.g.:

    7787 'John Smith' London

##### End of document