Provided by: bible-kjv_4.38build2_amd64 bug

NAME

       bible - Lookup words and verses in the Bible (King James version)

SYNOPSIS

       bible   [-f]  [-l  columns]  [-m  memlimit]  [-p  path-list]  [-d  datafile-name]  [verse-
       reference(s)]

DESCRIPTION

       Bible writes the text of  specified  Bible  verses  to  stdout.   The  text  used  is  the
       Authorized  (King  James)  version.   Commands may be given either on the command line, or
       interactively.  Bible also supports instant searches for verses  containing  a  particular
       word,  or  combination of words.  The program uses a specially-compressed form of the text
       that allows for rapid random access, while still compressing the original 4.4  Mbyte  text
       into  less  than  1.8  Mbytes (plus the "concordance" data file, which requires nearly 900
       Kbytes).

   Options
       The options to bible are:

       -f             Toggles special output formatting (pretty-printing).  By  default,  pretty-
                      printing  is  on (a change from earlier versions).  When pretty-printing is
                      off, bible precedes each verse with its book/chapter/verse reference.  When
                      pretty-printing  is  on, the book name and chapter are printed on a line by
                      themselves, and only when the chapter or book changes.  The start  of  each
                      verse  is  indented and preceded by the verse number.  The book and chapter
                      names are separated from the  text  by  blank  lines  to  facilitate  post-
                      processing  by  other  tools  such  as  adjust.   Pretty-printing activates
                      automatic line breaks ( -l)

       -l columns     When pretty-printing is off, bible prints one verse per line,  even  though
                      the  text  may  be much longer than will fit on a single line of a display.
                      This is very handy when the output will be processed by other programs, but
                      it  doesn't look very nice.  The -l option sets a limit on the length of an
                      output line, causing bible to break lines (only between words) to fit.  The
                      columns  argument  is  optional; if it is not specified, bible will use the
                      value of the COLUMNS environment variable minus one.  If COLUMNS is not set
                      a default value of 79 is used.

       -m memlimit    Bible normally allocates up to 1 megabyte for buffers to store uncompressed
                      text.  If the -m option is present, bible will set the  limit  to  memlimit
                      kilobytes.

       -p path-list   Bible  normally  searches  for  the  text  data  file  first in the current
                      directory, and then in /usr/lib.  The -p option may be used to  change  the
                      search  path.  Path-list should be a list of directories, each separated by
                      a space (be sure to escape them from the shell).

       -d filename    Bible normally expects to find the text data in a  file  named  bible.data,
                      and  the concordance data in bible.data.conc.  If the -d option is present,
                      bible will look for a text data file named filename, and a concordance data
                      file named filename.conc instead.

   Verse References
       Bible  accepts  verse  references in a variety of forms, including single verses and verse
       ranges.  For example:

           Jn3:16, john3:16,17 ps1:1-6

       Most recognizable abbreviations are allowed, and spelling errors are ignored if  the  book
       can  be  made  out  in the first few characters.  No distinction is made between upper and
       lower case.  Multiple references may be provided on an input line, delimited by spaces  or
       commas.

       Verse  and chapter will be silently coerced into a realistic range, e.g.  "Ps1:87" will be
       treated as Psalm 1:6 since there are only six verses in Psalm 1, and  "Rev99:99"  will  be
       treated  as  Revelation  22:21  (the  last  verse in the Bible).  A book name by itself is
       assumed to be a reference to chapter 1, verse 1 of that book, i.e. "Acts" is the  same  as
       "Acts1:1".  Similarly, a book and chapter without a verse is assumed to refer to verse one
       of that chapter.

       A range of verses may be printed by giving a starting and ending reference, separated by a
       hyphen ("-").  For example, "Gen1:1-Rev22:21" will dump the entire text (about 4.4 MB).

       Bible keeps track of your current context and will attempt to interpret references in that
       context.  For example if you request "John1:1", followed by "3:16",  and  then  "17",  the
       second  reference is assumed to be within the book of John, and the third is assumed to be
       within chapter 3 of that book.  An empty reference, e.g. a blank line on the  input,  will
       show the next verse following the last one displayed.

       More examples of legal verse references:

           psalms1

           Psalms

           Romans3:23 5:8 6:23

           1

           5:1

           1-22

   Concordance (Word Searches)
       Bible  includes a concordance, with which you can immediately find all the verses in which
       a word appears.  The ??word command will select all  the  references  that  include  word.
       Bible  will  display the number of matching references, if any, but since the number could
       be quite large, it won't actually list the references until you ask.

       In order to list the references from a word search, the ?list (or  ?l)  command  is  used.
       Likewise,  to  print  the full text of the verses selected by a word search, use the ?view
       (or ?v) command.

       The lists for multiple words may be combined using the ?and word and  ?or  word  commands.
       First create a reference list using the ??  command.  For example,

           ??faith

       will find 231 references to the word "faith".  To narrow the list further, the command

           ?and love

       will inform you that, while there were 281 references to "love", only 16 of them were also
       in the previous reference list (i.e. contained both words).  The  "combined  list"  of  16
       references  produced  by  the  ?and word command is the intersection of the two lists, and
       replaces the original reference list.

       The ?list and ?view commands will now apply to the combined list.   You  can  continue  to
       apply the ?and command to the combined list.  For example,

           ?and hope

       will  further narrow the combined list to only two references.  Typing ?view then displays
       the full text:

           1 Thessalonians 1

             3 Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of
           love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the
           sight of God and our Father;

           1 Thessalonians 5

             8 But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the
           breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.

       The ?or word command is similar to ?and, but it produces a combined reference list that is
       the  union  of  the  two  lists.   In other words, the list includes those verses in which
       either of the words appears.  For example

           ??angels
           ?or angel

       will find all 283 verses in wich either word is used.

       By default, reference lists cover the entire Bible.  But for those times when it is useful
       to  limit  them  to  a  particular section of the text, bible provides the ?in verse range
       command.  For example

           ?in mt1:1-rev22:21

       will limit future reference lists to the New Testament.  If you have a  current  reference
       list,  references  that  fall  outside  the  limits  will  be  dropped.   Note that only a
       contiguous range of verses may be used.  To reset the limits so that  the  whole  text  is
       searched, the command is ?in all.

   Interactive Use
       For  interactive  use, invoke bible without any verse references on the command line.  You
       should see a prompt displayed:

           Bible(KJV) [Gen1:1]>

       Typing ?  will print a command summary.

       The program accepts three types of interactive command input:

              •  Bible verse references, as described above.
              •  Concordance (word search) commands, also described above.  These  commands  are:
                 ??, ?list, ?view, ?and, ?or, and ?in.
              •  Miscellaneous program control commands:

              ?, ?h, ?help   Prints help text.
              ?f             Toggles output formatting modes.
              ?wfile         Begin  writing  program output to a file.  If file exists, output is
                             appended to what's there already.
              ?w             Stop writing to a file.
              >, <           Toggle the direction (forward or backward) in which bible will  move
                             through the text when a blank line is entered.
              q, ?bye, ?exit, ?quit, ?q
                             End the program.

BUGS

       References  to  the one-chapter books of Philemon and 3 John are non-standard in that they
       require a dummy chapter number.  For example, use Phm1:5 instead of Phm5 to get verse 5.

       The possessive form 's is handled strangely by the Concordance.  The apostrophe  has  been
       removed and the s has been treated as if it were a separate word.  So, for example, if you
       wanted to find all references to "refiner's" you would have to first search for  "refiner"
       (using the command ??refiner) and then combine it with a search for "s" (?and s).

       The  convention  for  handling partial verse specifications can be clumsy.  A book name by
       itself, e.g. "Matthew" is taken as a reference to verse 1:1 of that  book.   So  ?in  matt
       results  in a range limit of a single verse (Mt1:1) instead of the whole book as one might
       hope.  Similarly, ?in mt-rev results in a range of Matthew 1:1 to Revelation 1:1,  instead
       of extending all the way to Revelation 22:21.

FILES

       /usr/lib/bible.data
       /usr/lib/bible.data.conc

SEE ALSO

       Rev3:20

AUTHOR

       Chip Chapin, Hewlett Packard Company (chip@cup.hp.com).

       The  current version uses Lempel-Ziv-Welch compression on the data file, though I modified
       the "compress" program to emit checkpoints at known intervals to facilitate random  access
       to  the  data.   I call this simple technique "windowed compression", and it could be used
       for any similar application.  The data file can still be uncompressed using  the  standard
       "compress" utility if my file header is removed.

       I  would  like  to  gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the authors of the compress
       program, which I modified for use in the text storage component of bible.   As  listed  in
       the  compress sources they are: Spencer W. Thomas, Jim McKie, Steve Davies, Ken Turkowski,
       James A. Woods, Joe Orost.

       Matthew Vernon <matthew@debian.org> has substantially updated a the code of this  package.
       His  alterations  are  made  available  under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence,
       version 2 or later, as published by the Free Software Foundation.

                                         January 8, 1993                                 BIBLE(1)