STRFILE(8)

💖 STRFILE — bestie edition 💖

okay so this is the system manager's manual page for strfile(8), and honestly? it's giving “tiny utility, big main character energy” 💅. we're gonna keep every detail, no cap.

---

✨ NAME ✨

strfile, unstr — create a random access file for storing strings 🦋

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

strfile [-iorsx] [-c char] source_file [output_file]
unstr source_file

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so strfile reads a file containing groups of lines separated by a line containing a single percent % sign, and creates a data file. that data file contains a header structure plus a table of file offsets for each group of lines. the whole point? random access of the strings, periodt ✨.

The output file, if not specified on the command line, is named source_file.dat.

🎀 the options 🎀

the options are as follows, bestie — collect them all:

• -c char — change the delimiting character from the percent sign to char.
• -i — ignore case when ordering the strings.
• -o — order the strings in alphabetical order. the offset table will be sorted in the alphabetical order of the groups of lines referenced. any initial non-alphanumeric characters are ignored. this option causes the STR_ORDERED bit in the header str_flags field to be set.
• -r — randomize access to the strings. entries in the offset table will be randomly ordered. this option causes the STR_RANDOM bit in the header str_flags field to be set.
• -s — run silently; don't give a summary message when finished.
• -x — note that each alphabetic character in the groups of lines is rotated 13 positions in a simple caesar cypher. this option causes the STR_ROTATED bit in the header str_flags field to be set.

🌸 header format 🌸

the format of the header is literally this, bestie:

#define VERSION 2
u_int32_t       str_version;    /* version number */
u_int32_t       str_numstr;     /* # of strings in the file */
u_int32_t       str_longlen;    /* length of longest string */
u_int32_t       str_shortlen;   /* length of shortest string */
#define STR_RANDOM      0x1     /* randomized pointers */
#define STR_ORDERED     0x2     /* ordered pointers */
#define STR_ROTATED     0x4     /* rot-13'd text */
u_int32_t       str_flags;      /* bit field for flags */
u_int8_t        str_delim;      /* delimiting character */
u_int8_t        str_pad[3];     /* padding */

All fields are written in network byte order. Each field is also written independently so as to avoid structure padding problems on some architectures. 🫶

🦋 unstr, bestie 🦋

The purpose of unstr is to undo the work of strfile. It prints out the strings contained in the file source_file in the order that they are listed in the header file source_file.dat to standard output. It is possible to create sorted versions of input files by using -o when strfile is run and then using unstr to dump them out in the table order.

🍓 FILES 🍓

• source_file.dat — default output file.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• byteorder(3)
• fortune(6)

👑 HISTORY 👑

The strfile utility first appeared in 4.4BSD.

---

okay bye bestie 💖 this page came from Debian, dated August 14, 2013, and it's the STRFILE(8) manual page. slay responsibly ✨🫶