Provided by: dbview_1.0.4-4_amd64 bug

NAME

       dbview - View dBase III files

SYNOPSIS

       dbview  [-b|--browse]  [-d  delim|  --delimiter  delim]  [-D|--deleted] [-e|--description]
       [-h|--help] [-i|--info] [-o|--omit] [-v|--version] [-r|--reserve] [-t|--trim] dbfile

DESCRIPTION

       Dbview is a little tool that will display dBase III files.  You can also use it to convert
       your  old  .dbf files for further use with Unix.  It should also work with dBase IV files,
       but this is mostly untested.

       By default dbview displays the contents of a dBase III or IV database file.   This  is  be
       done  by  displaying both the name of the field itself and its value.  At the end of every
       record a newline is appended.

OPTIONS

       If no option given dbview only displays the database in its most friendly way.

       --browse, -b
              switches into browse mode.  Using  this  mode  no  fieldnames  will  be  displayed,
              instead  every  record  will  displayed  in  one line using a delimiter to separate
              fields.

       --delimiter, -d delimiter
              The default delimiter in browse mode is  the  colon  sign  ``:''.   This  parameter
              overrides it.  This can be useful especially if you plan to examine the output with
              scripts.

       --deleted, -D
              displays deleted records as well  as  the  delete  state  in  each  record  in  the
              database.

       --description, -e
              displays the field description of the database.

       --help, -h
              displays a complete (or short) help screen.

       --info, -i
              displays  some  (partially technical) information about the database like number of
              records and length of each record.

       --omit, -o
              omits displaying the whole database.  Using this parameter can be useful if  you're
              only interested in the structure.

       --reserve, -r
              Normally  fieldnames are converted into a more friendly format.  They are stored in
              capital letters, but that  looks  like  shouting.   This  parameter  supresses  the
              conversion.

       --trim, -t
              When this option is specified, leading and trailing spaces are omitted.  This might
              be useful when in browse mode.

       --version, -v
              displays version and exits.

NOTES

       As dBase is DOS, umlauts are stored using a different code table (namely ASCII) than  most
       modern  unices  (namely ANSI).  If you encounter such a file, I would recommend piping the
       output through recode(1) with ibmpc:latin1 as it's argument.

       If you want to examine the output generated by the browse mode, just take cut(1)  and  set
       its delimiter to the used delimiter or take awk(1) and continue.

COPYRIGHT

       Dbview  is  free  software.  It  is  based on routines from unknown source that I found on
       nic.funet.fi in /pub/msdos/languages/c as  dbase.c.   The  file  contained  the  following
       notice:

       These functions are provided by Valour Software as a gift.

       I  have  modified  and  included  this  file and wrote a skeleton around it.  All together
       provides a powerful tool for dBase III and IV database manipulation under Unix.

       I mainly have written this program,  because  I've  got  several  dbase  files  containing
       important  information  for  me.   As  I won't go running DOS everytime I need some of the
       stored information, I had to find  a  viewer  that  runs  unter  Unix,  resp.  Linux,  but
       unfortunately didn't find one.  So it was my turn.

       This  package  as  a  whole  is  published  under the GNU Public License, which is a great
       invention.

       It wasn't the intention to write a freaking viewer and reinvent the wheel again.   Instead
       dbview  is  intend  to be used in conjunction with your favourite unix text utilities like
       cut, recode and more.

       Martin Schulze
       Infodrom Oldenburg
       joey@infodrom.north.de

SEE ALSO

       recode(1), more(1), awk(1), cut(1).