GSMPB(8)

📦
version 2017-10 · 2 versions
, in nixos 26.05

🌸 GSMPB 🌸

okok so bestie, gather round, because gsmpb is literally the manual page for the GSM mobile phone phonebook manipulation program, and she is that girl. this is a System Manager's Manual situation, so yeah, it's giving serious-but-cute. let's get into it 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

gsmpb [ -b baudrate ] [ --baudrate baudrate ] [ -c ] [ --copy ] [ -d
destination device or file ] [ --destination destination device or file
] [ -h ] [ --help ] [ -i ] [ --index ] [ -I init string ] [ --init init
string ] [ -p phonebook name ] [ --phonebook phonebook name ] [ -s
source device or file ] [ --source source device or file ] [ -t
character set ] [ --charset character set ] [ -v ] [ --version ] [ -V ]
[ --verbose ] [ -X ] [ --xonxoff ] [ -y ] [ --synchronize ]

like, yes, that's a lot of brackets. she's flexible. she contains multitudes 🫶

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so gsmpb can store or retrieve phonebook entries that live in a GSM mobile phone's phonebook, and move them to or from a file. there's also a synchronization mode if that's your vibe. no cap.

gsmpb reads entries from the source, which can be a mobile phone (if you hand it a serial device file) or a file (if you hand it a file name). the source is never modified — hands off, she's just looking 👀. gsmpb writes phonebook entries to a destination file or device. depending on the mode, the source gets copied to the destination file (so the destination gets fully overwritten), or the destination gets synchronized against the source — and synchronized is the default, jsyk (details below, keep reading bestie).

if you pass - as the parameter for the --source or --destination options, then the phonebook is read from standard input and/or written to standard output, respectively. cute, right? 🎀

okay now the encoding tea ☕ — phonebook entry names are encoded using the GSM default alphabet in the mobile phone, whereas they're stored using Latin-1 encoding in phonebook files. when reading phonebook entries from a mobile phone, entry names get converted from the GSM default to Latin-1. characters that can't be converted to Latin-1 get encoded as character code 172 (Latin-1 boolean "not"). when writing file-based phonebook entries to a mobile phone, a conversion to the GSM default alphabet takes place. characters that can't be converted get encoded as GSM delta (code 16). and if the default character set has been changed using the --charset option, no conversion takes place at all. periodt.

error messages get printed to the standard error output. if the program terminates on error, the error code 1 is returned. 💀

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -b baudrate, --baudrate baudrate — the baud rate to use. the default baudrate is 38400. (yes, that's the default, don't @ me.)
  • -c, --copy — this causes the contents of the source to be copied to the destination. after this operation the destination has exactly the same contents as the source. matched. iconic. 🔥
  • -d destination, --destination destination — the destination device or file. that's it, that's the whole thing.
  • -h, --help — prints an option summary. your little cheat sheet 🫶
  • -I init string, --init init string — initialization string to send to the TA (default: "E0"). note that the sequence "ATZ" is sent first. like, first first. before anything else.
  • -i, --index — if the index position is given, gsmpb preserves the assignment of entries to memory slots in the mobile phone's phonebook. this can be used to backup phonebook entries with their position into a phonebook file, or to change the position of entries by editing a phonebook file and writing them back to the mobile phone. if this option is given, the phonebook file used as the source must contain indices for every entry. additionally, these indices must be unique, ie. it is not allowed to assign one entry twice to a specific position in the mobile phone's phonebook. no double-booking, bestie 🙈
  • -p phonebook, --phonebook phonebook — the name of the phonebook to read from or write to. this is only used for device sources and destinations. commonly available phonebooks are:
    • FD SIM fixdialling-phonebook
    • LD SIM last-dialling-phonebook
    • ME ME phonebook
    • MT combined ME and SIM phonebook
    • SM SIM phonebook
    • TA TA phonebook
  • -s source, --source source — the source device or file.
  • -t character set, --charset character set — set the character set to use for phonebook operations (default is the GSM default alphabet).
  • -v, --version — prints the program version. 👑
  • -V, --verbose — prints out a detailed progress report. she's a talker, we love her.
  • -X, --xonxoff — uses software handshaking (XON/XOFF) for accessing the device.
  • -y, --synchronize — this causes the contents of the source to be synchronized with the destination (default). synchronization in this context means:
    • if the source contains an entry with a name that does not exist in the destination, this entry is added to the destination.
    • if the source contains an entry with a name that can also be found in the destination, the entry in the destination is overwritten (ie. the telephone number is updated). exception: more then one entry with the name exists in the destination — in this case the new entry ist just added. (yes, "more then" and "ist" — that's how the original says it, we're keeping it fr fr 💀)
    • entries in the destination that do not exist in the source are deleted. gone. bye.

note that synchronization has the following properties that differ from copying: this algorithm does not change the location of unchanged entries in the destination phonebook. the synchronization function is not case-sensitive when comparing names.

🎀 PHONEBOOK FILE FORMAT 🎀

phonebook entries are stored in phonebook files that are meant to be human-readable and -editable (yes bestie, you can open them in a text editor, we stan). there is one phonebook entry per line, and each line has the format:

index|text|phone number

the fields have the following meanings:

  • index — the index of the entry which must be a positive number. the index may also be empty. indices can be used in conjunction with the --index option to store the entry into a specific position in the mobile phone.
  • text — descriptive text for the entry. the text may contain the special characters '\', '|', carriage return (ASCII code 13), or line feed (ASCII code 10). these must be written "\\", "\|", "\r", "\n", respectively. the text should only contain characters that can be encoded using the GSM default alphabet (see comments above 👆).
  • phone number — phone numbers can only contains the digits 0-9 and the '+' sign. a '+' sign denotes an international number. 🌈

💜 EXAMPLES 💜

the following invocation of gsmpb synchronizes the mobile phone's SIM phonebook with the file $HOME/.phonebook:

gsmpb --synchronize -b 19200 -d /dev/mobilephone \
      -s $HOME/.phonebook -p "SM"

look at her go 😭✨

🦋 AUTHOR 🦋

Peter Hofmann <software@pxh.de> — the icon, the legend, the main character.

💀 BUGS 💀

report bugs to software@pxh.de. include a complete, self-contained example that will allow the bug to be reproduced, and say which version of gsmpb you are using. like, help her help you, yk? 🙏

Copyright © 1999 Peter Hofmann

gsmpb is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

gsmpb is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. see the GNU Library General Public License for more details.

you should have received a copy of the GNU Library General Public License along with gsmpb; see the file COPYING. if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

gsminfo(7), gsmctl(1), gsmsendsms(1), gsmsmsd(8), gsmsmsstore(1).

go read those too, they're all in the same friend group 🫶

aaand that's the whole thing bestie, we ate and left no crumbs 🍓💅 this lil masterpiece is gsmpb v1.10, dated Sat Oct 24 19:18:56 UTC 2026 — so yeah, she's serving vintage-but-timeless, GSMPB(8) energy. mwah 💖✨

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