-- last edited by: L. Stewart, December 20, 1983 2:47 pm
name
Help: ?:
syntax
? pattern {pattern}*
If pattern does not include a *, then a CommandTool.LookupCommand is done to find the command. This has some interesting consequences described in the warnings section!
If pattern is a directory name, then a * is appended -- ? directoryName will display all commands registered in a particular directory and its subdirectories.
If pattern is not a full path name, and includes a *, then a * is prepended. Thus ? lis* will behave like ? *Lis*.
Help CommandName
Where CommandName is a single argument.
description
The ? command lists registered commands. ? searches the commander registry for command names and prints the documentation rope, which is likely to be terse...
The Help command is supposed to display the documentation for a given command. It is not implemented yet.
examples
% ? * > Commands.txt; Open Commands.txt
% -- this is a good way to get a complete list of what is loaded and available
% ? Version Date
///Commands/Version Print Cedar version number
///Commands/Date Print date and time
%
% ? ve*
///Commands/FSBringover FSBringover list-of-remote-patterns
///Commands/Scavenge Scavenge {volumeName} -- FS scavenge
///Commands/Version Print Cedar version number
%
% Help List
Help not implemented.
Try looking on the release documentation directory,
e.g. /Indigo/Cedar/Documentation/ListDoc.tioga.
%
warnings
If a pattern passed to ? does not include a *, then a CommandTool.LookupCommand is done to find it. If the command exists, this does the right thing, as shown above by the ? Version Date command. However, LookupCommand works by calling each procedure stored under the $Lookup property. . .
One of the default procedures is one which calls command files. Suppose there is no registered command named foo, but there is a command file named foo.cm in a directory on the commander search rules:
% Help foo
(Generic command) Commander ///foo.cm!3
%
What happened was that the command file lookup procedure decided that the appropriate action was to call the Commander command (see Commander) with ///t1.cm!3 as its first argument. This would be a clue that foo is something that is interpreted by the Commander command, but ? does not follow it up, you can do it yourself of course by typing Help Commander.
stop/undo
Click the STOP! button.
implementation
InitialCommandsImpl.mesa in CommandTool.df
contact
L. C. Stewart <Stewart.pa>
keyword hints
help button info man
keywords
to be supplied by the Index Czar