NAME

       plio, pldes, plser, plmerge, plparse, pl2link     - property list tools

SYNOPSIS

       pldes filename(s)
       plget key[morekeys]
       plser filename(s)
       plmerge [ destination-file ] [ input-file(s) ]
       plparse filename(s)
       pl2link input-file [ destination-file ]
       plio -input [ input-file ]  -output [ destination-file ]

DESCRIPTION

       Property  lists  in  GNUstep are hierarchical lists of values or attribute-value pairs.  Programmatically
       they are represented by instances of the NSString, NSData, NSArray, or NSDictionary (most  common)  class
       (which may contain other instances of such classes).  These instances can be serialized as binary objects
       to  form  a  persistent  representation.   In  addition,  there  are   two   alternative   human-readable
       representations.   The first, utilized in NeXTstep and OpenStep, utilizes a text format with equals signs
       expressing attribute-value bindings and set braces expressing  hierarchical  organization.   The  second,
       often  (uninformatively)  referred  to  as  "plist" format, is in XML and is used by Mac OS X.  The tools
       described here are utilities for manipulating the various persistent  property  list  representations  as
       files.

       pldes filename(s)
           Converts a binary serialised property list (class instance) to a text representation.

       plget key
           Reads  a  text representation of a dictionary in property list format as standard input, extracts the
           string value held in that dictionary with the specified  key,  and  writes  the  result  to  standard
           output.  Multiple keys may be used to extract values from nested dictionaries.

       plser filename(s)
           Converts a text representation of a property list to a binary serialized representation.

       plmerge [ destination-file ] [ input-file(s) ]
           Merges text property lists into a single property list

       plparse filename(s)
           Checks that each file contains a valid text representation of a property list.

       pl2link input-file [ destination-file ]
           Produces a desktop link file for KDE and Gnome for the given text representation of a property list.

       plio -input [ input-file ]
           Takes the serialized plist represented by input-file and outputs it to standard output.

       plio -output [ destination-file ]
           Takes a plist from standard input and serializes it into destination-file.

SEE ALSO

       defaults(1)

HISTORY

       Written 1999-2000.

       This manual page first appeared in gnustep-base 1.9.2 (March 2004).

AUTHORS

       pldes, plget, plparse, plser were written by Richard Frith-Macdonald <rfm@gnu.org>.

       plmerge was written by Jonathan Gapen  <jagapen@whitewater.chem.wisc.edu>.

       pl2link was written by Fred Kiefer <FredKiefer@gmx.de>.

       pl (renamed to plio in Debian) was written by Gregory Casamento <greg_casamento@yahoo.com>.