FORM(1)

💖 FORM(1) — the manual page, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because we're about to talk about FORM, and honestly? she's that girl. this is the General Commands Manual entry for her, and i'm gonna walk you through every single flag like we're texting at 2am. no details skipped, no cap. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

FORM — Symbolic manipulation system. yeah. that's the whole name. iconic behaviour honestly.

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

form [ options ] inputfile

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so FORM is a symbolic manipulation system. she reads a text file — and that file should have a name ending in the extension .frm, or you can hand her - to read from standard input — and inside that file there are definitions of mathematical expressions, plus statements that tell her how to manipulate those expressions. 💅

she's widely used in the theoretical particle physics community, but like… she's not restricted to that field at all. she can do other stuff too. main character energy, honestly. 👑

and she has sisters:

• tform — the threaded version, using POSIX Threads.
• parform — the multiprocessing version, using MPI.

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

one bullet per flag, no skipping, we're doing this properly:

• - — read the input from stdin instead of from a file.
• -c — error checking only. > heads up bestie: this will not work properly if there are conditionals in the preprocessor phase that depend on results obtained at earlier stages of the program.
• -C — the next argument is the filename of the log file. the default is the filename of the FORM script with the .log extension.
• -d, -D — the next argument/option is the name of a preprocessor variable that will be defined before the run starts. a specific value can be assigned with the syntax -d VARIABLENAME=VALUE. the default value is 1.
• -f — output goes only to log file.
• -F — output only to log file. further like -L or -ll.
• -h — wait for some key to be touched before finishing the run. basically only for some old window based systems.
• -I — the next argument/option is the path of a directory for include, procedure and subroutine files.
• -l — make a regular log file.
• -ll, -L — make a log file without intermediate statistics.
• -M — this option is ignored. the PID (process identifier) of the process is now always included in the name of the temporary files.
• -p — the next argument/option is the path of a directory for input, include, procedure and subroutine files.
• -pipe — indicates that FORM is started up as the receiving end of a pipe. action will be taken to set up the proper communication channels.
• -q, -si — quiet option. only output expressions are printed.
• -R — recover from a crash. we love a comeback arc. 🫶
• -s — the next argument/option is the path of a directory for a setup file.
• -S — the next argument/option is the name of a setup file.
• -t — the next argument/option is the path of a directory for temporary files.
• -ts — the next argument/option is the path of a directory for temporary sort files.
• -T — puts FORM in a mode in which the maximum totalsize is measured and printed at the end of the program.
• -v — only the version will be printed. the program terminates immediately after it.
• -vv — same as -v, but prints verbose version information. she's giving details. ✨
• -w — this should be followed immediately by a number without any space. the number indicates the number of worker threads for tform. all other versions of FORM ignore this parameter.
• -W — turn on the wall-clock time mode in the statistics.
• -z — the number following is a timelimit for the program in second.
• -Z — removes the .str file on crash, whatever its contents. under ordinary circumstances at a crash a .str file will not be removed if it has a nonzero content.
• -y — run only the preprocessor and dump its output.

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

the vibes she reads from the world around her:

• FORMPATH — the directory in which FORM will look for procedures and header files, assuming it cannot find them in the current directory.
• FORMTMP — the directory in which FORM will make its temporary files.
• FORMTMPSORT — the directory in which FORM will make its temporary sort files.
• FORMSETUP — the full path and name of a setup file.

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🎀 SEE ALSO 🎀

• https://www.nikhef.nl/~form/ — the FORM home site. 🏠
• https://github.com/form-dev/form/ — the repository on GitHub.

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and that's the whole page, bestie — every flag, every path, every env var, all of it. 💜

this was the FORM(1) manual page, dated 2026-01-27, from FORM(1). stan a symbolic manipulation system who knows her worth. periodt. 💅✨