Overview of the built-in utilities
Below is a brief summary of the FMLI built-in utilities.
There are manual pages
for each in section 1fmli.
echo-
The echo utility outputs its operands.
fmlcut-
The fmlcut utility is used to cut out selected fields of
each line of a file.
It has essentially the same functionality as the UNIX utility cut.
It has been included as an FMLI built-in utility for performance reasons.
fmlgrep-
The fmlgrep utility is used to search for a certain
pattern in a file.
It has essentially the same functionality as the UNIX utility grep.
It has been included as an FMLI built-in utility for performance reasons.
fmlexpr-
The fmlexpr utility evaluates its arguments as an expression,
thus providing arithmetic and logical operations on integers,
logical operations on strings, and some
pattern matching facilities.
It evaluates a single expression and writes the result to standard
output.
It has essentially the same functionality as the UNIX utility expr.
It has been included as an FMLI built-in utility for performance reasons.
fmlmax-
The fmlmax utility is used to either determine
the position of the field in a form or to determine the
longest out of a number of strings.
It is useful for the
redesign of forms layout when the autolayout descriptor has
been set to TRUE.
getitems-
The getitems utility takes as its only argument a delimiter string.
It returns a list
of the currently selected items, separated by the delimiter supplied.
getfrm-
The getfrm utility returns the current frame number.
It takes no arguments.
indicator-
The indicator utility allows you to control the Working
indicator and bell,
and allows you to define your own indicators on the banner line.
message-
The message utility outputs its operands to the FMLI message line.
The -t option outputs a ``transient'' message (lasts
until another key is pressed), the -f option outputs
a ``frame permanent'' message (lasts as long as the frame is
current), and the -p option outputs a ``permanent'' message
(lasts until another message is displayed, and reappears after
that message clears).
The terminal bell can also be made to sound.
pathconv-
The pathconv utility converts an alias to a full pathname.
It can also produce
a shortened version of a pathname suitable for use as a frame title.
readfile, longline-
The readfile utility reads the file passed as its argument and
writes it to standard output.
If the system's locale is other than C, readfile
tries to read <dirname>/$LANG/<file> if the
$LANG subdirectory exists or <dirname>/<file> otherwise.
After a call to readfile,
a call to longline will return the
length (including carriage return) of the longest
line in the previously read file.
The longline utility can also take a filename
argument,
in which case it will return the length of the longest
line in that file.
regex-
The regex utility performs regular expression matching on its string input (utilizing
regex.
The regex utility is useful to dynamically
generate the contents of
a frame (see examples in
``Frame definition files''.)
It can be used to approximate many of the capabilities of
cut(1),
paste(1),
and
grep(1),
and some of the capabilities of
sed(1).
reinit-
The reinit utility takes as an argument the name of an initialization file.
It
is used to make global changes to the FMLI session
while staying in the current application.
run-
The run utility is used to invoke an executable in full-screen mode.
set, unset-
These utilities set and unset variables either
in the FMLI process, the UNIX system environment, or in files.
setcolor-
The setcolor utility allows you to redefine an existing color, or define new colors
if your terminal allows more than the eight colors already defined in FMLI.
shell-
The shell utility is used to run a command using the UNIX system shell.
Although it is not often needed in an FMLI application, it is useful
when an application has an executable with the same name as an FMLI built-in
or to run a UNIX system shell built-in.
test-
The test utility checks to see if a condition is true.
test is useful in conditional statements.
It has essentially the same format as test in the UNIX system shell.
Five other built-ins allow a frame or several frames
(that is, form frames, menu frames, or text frames)
to communicate to an external process through a pipe.
The Form and Menu Language Interpreter will send strings
to the external process and interpret
the process's output accordingly.
This capability is referred to as
``co-processing,'' and the built-in co-processing utilities are as follows:
cocreate-
The
cocreate
utility initializes communication to an independent co-process using named pipes.
cosend-
The
cosend
utility sends strings from FMLI to the co-process.
The -n option
performs a ``no wait'' condition that sends text, but does not block for a
response.
cocheck-
The
cocheck
utility checks the incoming pipe for information.
It returns TRUE or FALSE.
coreceive-
The
coreceive
utility performs a ``no wait'' read on the pipe.
It takes a process ID as an argument.
codestroy-
The
codestroy
utility terminates the communication.
For more information about how these co-processing utilities are used,
see the
coproc(1fmli)
manual page.
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Conditional statements
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Built-in utilities
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UnixWare 7 Release 7.1.4 - 27 April 2004