MBK_IN_FILTER(1)

💅 MBK_IN_FILTER 💅

okay so bestie, welcome to a page from the MBK ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES manual — yes that's the manual name, and the page itself is MBK_IN_FILTER(1). this one's short, sweet, and honestly kind of iconic for anyone who's ever had to unzip an Alliance file before reading it. let's get into it 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

MBK_IN_FILTER — literally just: it defines the input filter. that's the whole job. 💅

🎀 ORIGIN 🎀

so this software is part of the ALLIANCE CAD SYSTEM, which was developed by the ASIM team at the LIP6 laboratory of Université Pierre et Marie CURIE, in Paris, France. 🇫🇷✨

• Web : http://asim.lip6.fr/recherche/alliance/
• E-mail : alliance-users@asim.lip6.fr

like, that's where it comes from, no cap.

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so MBK_IN_FILTER sets the input filter used for reading compressed Alliance files. the filter is typically a string containing a filename and options. simple enough, right?

here's the vibe check on what that filter actually has to do: it must read a compressed data flow on its standard input, and write a non-compressed data flow on its standard output. so it's a little decompression pipe, essentially. 🧚

files are taken from the first directory where they're found, according to the environment variable MBK_CATA_LIB. (iykyk — that one's doing the real search work.)

and here's the little plot twist 👀 — if a compressed version and a non-compressed version of a file both exist in the same directory, the non-compressed one gets opened, and a warning message is supplied. not me getting a warning for having both, but okay, fair.

oh and also — to actually activate filters, the variable MBK_FILTER_SFX must be set. so MBK_IN_FILTER alone isn't enough, bestie. you need both. periodt. 💀

🌸 EXAMPLE 🌸

opening compressed files with gzip, like so:

setenv MBK_IN_FILTER "/asim/gnu/bin/gunzip -c"
setenv MBK_FILTER_SFX ".gz"

look at that. two lines. -c doing its thing, .gz as the suffix. iconic behavior honestly. 🔥

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

• mbk(3)
• MBK_FILTER_SFX(1)
• MBK_OUT_FILTER(1)
• mbkenv(3)

go read those too, bestie, they're the whole friend group 💜

🙈 BUG REPORT 🙈

okay so full transparency: this tool is under development at the ASIM department of the LIP6 laboratory. they literally need your feedback to improve documentation and tools. so like… if something's weird, tell them. be the main character who files the bug report. 👑

🌈💅 and that's the page!! brought to you by ASIM/LIP6, dated October 1, 1999 — yes, 1999, vintage, iconic, still slaying. bye bestie!! 💖✨🎀