Tracking versions with SCCS

val

The val command is used to determine whether a file is an SCCS file meeting the characteristics specified by certain keyletters. It checks for the existence of a particular delta when the SID for that delta is specified with -r.

The string following -y or -m is used to check the value set by the t or m flag, respectively. See admin(1) for descriptions of these flags.

The val command treats the special argument hyphen differently from other SCCS commands. It allows val to read the argument list from the standard input instead of from the command line, and the standard input is read until an end-of-file (control-d) is entered. This permits one val command with different values for keyletters and file arguments. For example,

   $ val -
   -yc -mabc s.abc
   -mxyz -ypl1 s.xyz
   control_d

first checks if file s.abc has a value c for its type flag and value abc for the module name flag. Once this is done, val processes the remaining file, in this case s.xyz.

The val command returns an 8-bit code. Each bit set shows a specific error (see val(1) for a description of errors and codes). In addition, an appropriate diagnostic is printed unless suppressed by -s. A return code of 0 means all files met the characteristics specified.