RCSCLEAN(1)

🌸 NAME 🌸

okay bestie, meet rcsclean(1) from the General Commands Manual — clean up working files. that’s the whole vibe: it sweeps away the working files you’re done with. 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

rcsclean [options] [ file ... ]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

rcsclean removes files that are not being worked on. and rcsclean -u also unlocks and removes files that are being worked on but have not changed. slay cleanup behavior ✨

For each file you give it, rcsclean compares the working file and a revision in the corresponding RCS file. If it finds a difference, it does nothing. Otherwise, it first unlocks the revision if the -u option is given, and then removes the working file unless the working file is writable and the revision is locked. It logs its actions by outputting the corresponding rcs -u and rm -f commands on the standard output. 🫶

Files are paired as explained in ci(1). If no file is given, all working files in the current directory are cleaned. Filenames matching an RCS suffix denote RCS files; all others denote working files. 🎀

The number of the revision to which the working file is compared may be attached to any of the options -n, -q, -r, or -u. If no revision number is specified, then if the -u option is given and the caller has one revision locked, rcsclean uses that revision; otherwise rcsclean uses the latest revision on the default branch, normally the root. 🦋

rcsclean is useful for clean targets in makefiles. See also rcsdiff(1), which prints out the differences, and ci(1), which normally reverts to the previous revision if a file was not changed. 🔥

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -ksubst — use subst style keyword substitution when retrieving the revision for comparison. See co(1) for details.
• -n[rev] — do not actually remove any files or unlock any revisions. Using this option will tell you what rcsclean would do without actually doing it. bestie, it’s a preview mode.
• -q[rev] — do not log the actions taken on standard output.
• -r[rev] — this option has no effect other than specifying the revision for comparison.
• -T — preserve the modification time on the RCS file even if the RCS file changes because a lock is removed. This option can suppress extensive recompilation caused by a make(1) dependency of some other copy of the working file on the RCS file. Use this option with care; it can suppress recompilation even when it is needed, i.e. when the lock removal would mean a change to keyword strings in the other working file. no cap, be careful with this one ⚠️
• -u[rev] — unlock the revision if it is locked and no difference is found.
• -V — print RCS’s version number.
• -Vn — emulate RCS version n. See co(1) for details.
• -xsuffixes — use suffixes to characterize RCS files. See ci(1) for details.
• -zzone — use zone as the time zone for keyword substitution; see co(1) for details.

🦋 EXAMPLES 🦋

rcsclean  *.c  *.h

removes all working files ending in .c or .h that were not changed since their checkout. 🧚

rcsclean

removes all working files in the current directory that were not changed since their checkout. 💜

🌈 FILES 🌈

rcsclean accesses files much as ci(1) does.

🍓 ENVIRONMENT 🍓

• RCSINIT — options prepended to the argument list, separated by spaces. A backslash escapes spaces within an option. The RCSINIT options are prepended to the argument lists of most RCS commands. Useful RCSINIT options include -q, -V, -x, and -z.
• RCS_MEM_LIMIT — normally, for speed, commands either memory map or copy into memory the RCS file if its size is less than the memory-limit, currently defaulting to “unlimited”. Otherwise (or if the initially-tried speedy ways fail), the commands fall back to using standard i/o routines. You can adjust the memory limit by setting RCS_MEM_LIMIT to a numeric value lim (measured in kilobytes). An empty value is silently ignored. As a side effect, specifying RCS_MEM_LIMIT inhibits fall-back to slower routines.
• TMPDIR — name of the temporary directory. If not set, the environment variables TMP and TEMP are inspected instead and the first value found is taken; if none of them are set, a host-dependent default is used, typically /tmp.

💀 DIAGNOSTICS 💀

The exit status is zero if and only if all operations were successful. Missing working files and RCS files are silently ignored. quietly ignored, fr fr 🙈

👑 IDENTIFICATION 👑

• Author: Walter F. Tichy.
• Manual Page Revision: 5.10.1; Release Date: 2024-10-01.
• Copyright © 2010-2022 Thien-Thi Nguyen.
• Copyright © 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 Paul Eggert.
• Copyright © 1982, 1988, 1989 Walter F. Tichy.

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• ci(1)
• co(1)
• ident(1)
• rcs(1)
• rcsdiff(1)
• rcsmerge(1)
• rlog(1)
• rcsfile(5)

Walter F. Tichy, RCS--A System for Version Control, Software--Practice & Experience 15, 7 (July 1985), 637-654.

The full documentation for RCS is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info(1) and RCS programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info rcs

should give you access to the complete manual. Additionally, the RCS homepage:

http://www.gnu.org/software/rcs/

has news and links to the latest release, development site, etc. 🌐

🧚 BUGS 🧚

At least one file must be given in older Unix versions that do not provide the needed directory scanning operations.

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later, bestie — this was GNU RCS 5.10.1, dated 2024-10-01, for rcsclean(1) 💖