ABOOK(1)

📦
version 0.6.2 · 3 versions
, in alpine 3.24, fedora 43, fedora 44, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable

📒 ABOOK(1) 📒

Okay bestie, this is the General Commands Manual entry for abook and it is literally so good. 💖 Let's get into it.

✨ NAME ✨

abook — text-based address book program 📇

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

abook [ OPTION ]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

Okay so abook is a text-based address book program 🦋 It keeps track of your Name, Email, Address, and a bunch of Phone fields. It was made to work with mutt, but ngl it's just as iconic on its own. 💜

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

  • -h, --help — shows you the usage, no cap 🙈
  • -C, --config <filename> — swaps in a different config file. If you don't pick one, it checks $HOME/.abook/abookrc first, then $XDG_DATA_HOME/abook/abookrc 🌈
  • -f, --datafile <filename> — swaps in a different addressbook file. Without this, it looks at $HOME/.abook/addressbook first, then $XDG_DATA_HOME/abook/addressbook 📂
  • --mutt-query <string> [ --outformat <outputformat> ] — makes a query for mutt, basically searching the addressbook for <string> 🔍
    • The --datafile option (from above) can go BEFORE this one if you want to search a different addressbook file. Main character move. 👑
    • Only a few of the <outputformat> options are allowed here: mutt (the default), vcard, and custom ✨
  • --convert [ --informat <inputformat> ] [ --infile <inputfile> ] [ --outformat <outputformat> ] [ --outfile <outputfile> ] — converts <inputfile> in <inputformat> into <outputfile> in <outputformat>. The defaults are abook, stdin, text, and stdout 🔄

The input formats it can read:

  • abook — abook native format
  • ldif — ldif / Netscape addressbook
  • mutt — mutt alias
  • pine — pine addressbook
  • csv — comma separated values
  • palmcsv — Palm comma separated values
  • vcard — VCard addressbook

The output formats it can make:

  • abook — abook native format
  • ldif — ldif / Netscape addressbook (.4ld)
  • mutt — mutt alias
  • html — html document
  • pine — pine addressbook
  • vcard — VCard addressbook
  • csv — comma separated values
  • palmcsv — Palm comma separated values
  • elm — elm alias
  • text — plain text
  • spruce — Spruce address book
  • wl — Wanderlust address book
  • ical — iCalendar
  • bsdcal — BSD calendar
  • custom — Custom output format, see below 🎨
  • --outformatstr <string> — only matters if you use --mutt-query or --convert and --outformat=custom. The <string> is a format string that lets you add placeholders 🧚
    • A placeholder can be any of the standard field names (see abookrc(5)) and it has to be wrapped in curly brackets, like {name}.
    • The default value is "{nick} ({name}): {mobile}" 💖
    • If your <string> starts with !, only entries where all the fields from <string> are non-NULL get included. Very picky, very effective. 💅
  • --add-email — reads an e-mail message from stdin and adds the sender to the addressbook 📨
  • --add-email-quiet — same as --add-email, but it won't confirm that it added anyone 🤫
  • --email-fields <fields> — a comma-separated list of the email fields it checks when adding email addresses. It defaults to "from", but adding pretty much everything would be "from,to,cc" 💌
  • --formats — lists the available formats 📜

🌈 COMMANDS DURING USE 🌈

Press '?' while you're using it and it'll show you a list of commands. ⭐

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

mutt(1), abookrc(5) 🔗

🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

This manual page was written by Alan Ford <alan@whirlnet.co.uk>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but anyone can use it). 🌸

abook was written by Jaakko Heinonen <jheinonen@users.sourceforge.net> 👑

That's the tea, bestie! 💖 Signing off from ABOOK(1), last updated 2006-09-06. Stay iconic. 🧚✨

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