DBVIEW(1)

👑 DBVIEW — ok bestie, it's dbview(1) time 💅

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🌸 NAME 🌸

dbview — the little tool that lets you view dBase III files 🦋 (and lowkey convert them too, we'll get there).

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

dbview [-b|--browse] [-d delim| --delimiter delim] [-D|--deleted]
[-e|--description] [-h|--help] [-i|--info] [-o|--omit] [-v|--version]
[-r|--reserve] [-t|--trim] dbfile

Yes the flags are a whole alphabet soup, don't panic, we're going through every single one below, fr fr 💖

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

So. Dbview is this adorable little tool that displays dBase III files. And like, not just displays them — you can also use it to convert your old .dbf files so you can actually do stuff with them on Unix. It should also work with dBase IV files, but ngl that's mostly untested 🙈.

By default, dbview displays the contents of a dBase III or IV database file. It does this by showing you both the name of the field itself and its value. And at the end of every record, a newline gets appended. Cute, consistent, no notes 💅

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🔥 OPTIONS 🔥

If you give it no option at all, dbview just displays the database in its most friendly way. Which honestly? A vibe. 🫶

• --browse, -b — switches into browse mode. In this mode, no fieldnames get displayed — instead every record is displayed in one line, using a delimiter to separate the fields. Sleek. Minimal. Iconic.
• --delimiter, -d delimiter — the default delimiter in browse mode is the colon sign :. This parameter overrides it. This is especially useful if you're planning to examine the output with scripts, iykyk 👀
• --deleted, -D — displays deleted records as well as the delete state in each record in the database. Yes bestie, the ghosts are still in there 👻
• --description, -e — displays the field description of the database. The whole backstory of your columns ✨
• --help, -h — displays a complete (or short) help screen. Your classic cry-for-help flag, we love her 💖
• --info, -i — displays some (partially technical) information about the database, like number of records and length of each record. The stats girlies stay fed 📊
• --omit, -o — omits displaying the whole database. Super useful if you're only interested in the structure — like, we're not here for the data, we're here for the architecture 💅
• --reserve, -r — normally fieldnames get converted into a more friendly format. They're stored in CAPITAL LETTERS, which, let's be real, looks like shouting. This parameter suppresses the conversion. No more yelling bestie 🗣️
• --trim, -t — when this option is specified, leading and trailing spaces are omitted. This might be useful when in browse mode. Marie Kondo-ing your whitespace ✂️
• --version, -v — displays version and exits. Bye 👋

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🧚 NOTES 🧚

Okay so this part is important, listen up. Because dBase is DOS, umlauts are stored using a different code table (namely ASCII) than most modern unices (namely ANSI). So if you encounter such a file, I would recommend piping the output through recode(1) with ibmpc:latin1 as its argument. Trust the process 💜

And if you want to examine the output generated by the browse mode, just take cut(1) and set its delimiter to the used delimiter — or take awk(1) and continue. Mix and match, chef's kiss 👑

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💖 COPYRIGHT 💖

Dbview is free software. It's based on routines from unknown source that I found on nic.funet.fi in /pub/msdos/languages/c as dbase.c. That file contained the following notice:

These functions are provided by Valour Software as a gift.

I have modified and included this file and wrote a skeleton around it. All together provides a powerful tool for dBase III and IV database manipulation under Unix.

I mainly have written this program, because I've got several dbase files containing important information for me. As I won't go running DOS every time I need some of the stored information, I had to find a viewer that runs unter Unix, resp. Linux, but unfortunately didn't find one. So it was my turn. 😭

This package as a whole is published under the GNU Public License, which is a great invention. 🎀

It wasn't the intention to write a freaking viewer and reinvent the wheel again. Instead dbview is intend to be used in conjunction with your favourite unix text utilities like cut, recode and more. Combo moves only 💅

Martin Schulze Infodrom Oldenburg joey@infodrom.north.de

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

recode(1), more(1), awk(1), cut(1).

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And that's the whole page bestie — this was the Unix manual, dated November 20th, 2006, and no cap it ate. Go read your dbf files, you absolute icon 💖✨