SEXPP(1)

✨ SEXPP(1) ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to the User Commands section of the manual — this is the whole vibe on sexpp, and honestly? she's giving main character energy 💅

---

💖 NAME 💖

sexpp — read, parse, and print out S-expressions. that's it. that's the whole job. no cap.

---

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

cat certificate-file | sexpp -a -x

---

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so sexpp typically reads an S-expression from standard input and then rewrites it to standard output. like, it eats the sexp, chews it up, and spits it back out. iconic behaviour honestly 🫶

running with no switches at all? that lowkey implies:

-p -a -b -c -x

which is a whole mood, but we'll get to what each one means 💀

---

🎀 INPUT OPTIONS 🎀

where does the tea come from? that's this section. pick your source, bestie.

• -i filename — takes input from a file instead of stdin. not me avoiding the terminal pipeline entirely 🙈
• -p — prompts the user for console input. it's gonna ask you directly, so be ready to type ✨
• -s — treats input up to EOF as a single string, instead of parsing it. so like, no parsing girlies here, we're just taking the whole thing raw 🍓

---

🔥 CONTROL LOOP 🔥

the main routine typically reads one S-expression, prints it out again, and then stops. just one. one and done. very demure, very mindful. but you can change that:

• -x — execute the main loop repeatedly until end of file. it just keeps going. she doesn't stop, she doesn't quit 👑

---

💜 OUTPUT OPTIONS 💜

the output format is normally canonical, but bestie you can change that. and here's the tea: more than one output format can be requested at once. stack 'em. collect 'em. slay ✨

• -o filename — write output to a file instead of stdout. bye bye terminal, hello file 🎀
• -a — write output in advanced transport format
• -b — write output in base-64 output format
• -c — write output in canonical format
• -l — suppress linefeeds after output. no little newlines, they're gone, they've left the chat 💀
• -w width — changes line width to the specified width (where 0 implies no line-width constraint). default is 75. so if you want chaos, pass 0 and let her run free 🌈

---

🌟 AUTHOR 🌟

the sexpp project is maintained by Maxim Samsonov on behalf of Ribose, Inc. — and it's based on code from Ron Rivest and Butler Lampson. this manual page was written by Daniel Kahn Gillmor for the Debian project, but may be used by others. shoutout to the whole squad honestly 🫶👑

---

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-rivest-sexp/

---

okay that's the whole page bestie, go forth and parse responsibly 💖

this was sexpp, March 2025, page SEXPP(1) — tysm for reading, mwah 💅✨