testdbfawk(1)

💖 testdbfawk — bestie's guide to sniffing out dbfawk files 💖

okay so. you know how xastir needs to render maps and somebody's gotta figure out which dbfawk rule file goes with which .dbf file? that's this. this is the lil tool from the General Commands Manual section that quietly does all the matchmaking, no cap. ✨

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

testdbfawk [-f file.awk| -D dir] -d file.dbf

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

It scans dbfawk files for a matching dbf file so that map rendering in xastir can actually, y'know, happen. that's the whole vibe. 💅

here's the tea on what it takes:

• --help — prints the command line usage. say it with me: help exists, use it. 🫶
• -D — points at a dir that contains *.dbfawk files.
• -f — points at a file that contains awk rules.
• -d — the dbf file you want it to parse.

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🦋 EXAMPLES 🦋

testdbfawk -D . -d tgr36119lkA.dbf 2>&1|less

so what's going on here, bestie? testdbfawk peeks at the current directory for dbfawk files whose signatures match the signature of tgr36119lkA.dbf. iconic matchmaking fr fr.

the catch (and it's a whole thing): testdbfawk dumps its output to standard error, not standard output. so in this example, standard error gets redirected to standard out (2>&1) and then piped into "less" so you can actually page through it like a civilized person instead of getting blasted by 4000 lines. 😭✨

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📝 NOTES 📝

dbfawk hints and kinks, per the source, and you're gonna wanna screenshot this:

you gotta think like an awk programmer, okay? that means:

• the order that rules are listed matters — lowkey the whole game.
• it's important to use "next" as soon as it makes sense, so other rules aren't looked at unnecessarily. don't make it do extra work, that's rude. 🙈
• and use "skip" when you want to fix bad dbf data.

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• https://github.com/Xastir/Xastir/wiki/DBFAWK
• APRS[tm] is a Trademark of Bob Bruninga, his home page is at "http://www.aprs.org/aprs.html"

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💜 COPYING 💜

• Copyright (C) 1999,2000 Frank Giannandrea KC2GJS
• Copyright (C) 2000-2026 The Xastir Group

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alright that's the whole page, you're basically a dbfawk matchmaker now, main character energy only 🌈💫

bye bestie!! this was the testdbfawk(1) page, brought to you by The Xastir Group — that's the source/version vibe — and dated 2009-12-22. mwah 💋🌸