Provided by: fhist_1.18-2.1_amd64 bug

NAME

       fhist - file history

SYNOPSIS

       fhist filename...  option...

       fhist -Help

       fhist -VERSion

DESCRIPTION

       The  fhist program is used to keep track of the successive versions of a file.  Using this
       program, you can remember all of your changes to a file, and get back any one of  the  old
       versions.  The uses of this ability are:

       1.  You  can make a series of tentative edits to the file, and if necessary back up to the
           last "good" edit.

       2.  You can delete old subroutines and code from your file which are obsolete,  but  still
           be able to get them back in the future in case a need for them arises.

       3.  You  can  compare  two  versions of the file to see how you fixed some old problem, so
           that you can check up on the correctness of the fix at a later date.

       4.  You get a record of your remarks for each version, so that you can quickly  know  what
           bugs were fixed, and what features were implemented.

       5.  The date the file was last edited can be automatically stored in the file.

       The  fhist  program  manipulates  modules.   A module is simply any text file that you are
       interested in keeping versions of.  For example, a source file doit.c is a module, and  so
       is a documentation file howto.doc.  The module name includes the suffix of the file (as in
       the above examples).   However,  pathnames  are  not  part  of  a  module  name,  so  that
       /usr/dbell/bar.c cannot be a legal module name.  A module name is limited to 12 characters
       since the fhist program needs two extra characters for its own purpose.

   Keyword Substitution
       It is possible to have information about the state of the file  inserted  into  the  file.
       See the -Modify and -No‐Keywords options, below, for more infromation.

OPTIONS

       The following options are understood:

       -Path pathname
               Modules  are  stored  in  a  directory,  called the module storage directory.  The
               default directory is FHIST, and therefore is  located  relative  to  your  current
               directory.   This  is  convenient  when  you  are  in  a directory containing many
               modules, and you want a local storage directory to contain just those modules.  If
               you  use  the  -p  option,  then you can locate the storage directory anywhere you
               choose.  This is useful if you choose to have a common storage directory  for  all
               of your files, independent of where they actually are used.

               The  files inside of the storage directory should not be changed by you.  Doing so
               will probably corrupt your edit history,  causing  errors  when  you  extract  old
               revisions.   For  your  information, though, each module is stored as two files in
               the directory.  The one with the .s suffix is a copy of the newest version of  the
               module,  with  one extra line at the beginning.  The one with the .e suffix is the
               edit history of the  module,  and  contains  the  information  needed  to  extract
               previous revisions of the module.  Thus if the edit history is ever corrupted, you
               will at least have the most recent version of the module.

       -MaKe_Path
               This  option  may  be  used  to  request  that  the  path  directory  be   created
               automatically  if  it  does  not  yet  exist.   This  works for both the directory
               specified by the -Path option, and for the default.  Intermediate directories will
               also be created if necessary.

       -BINary This  option  may  be used to specify that the file is binary, that it may contain
               NUL characters.  It is essential that you have consistent presence or  absence  of
               the  -BINary  option  for  each  file  when  combined  with  the -CReate, -Update,
               -Conditional_Update  and  -Extract  options.   Failure  to  do  so  will   produce
               inconsistent results.  Note: this is different behaviour to the fcomp(1) option of
               the same name.  Note: the -BINary option does not imply the -No‐Keywords option.

       -CReate
               To use the fhist program for the first time,  you  need  to  create  your  storage
               directory.   Therefore,  cd  to  the  directory  where you want it to be, which is
               probably the directory containing the modules you want to save the  revisions  of.
               Then  create  the directory FHIST (or some other name if you don't want to use the
               default name).

               To start using a module under fhist, you must first use the -CReate option.   This
               creates  the  initial  edit  for  that  module  in the storage directory, with the
               contents of the specified module as the initial edit.  Thus, if you have a  source
               file prog.c, then the command:
                      fhist prog.c -create
               creates the initial edit of the module.  As part of this process, you are asked to
               provide remarks about the file.  These remarks can be seen later using  the  -List
               option  (described below).  After the remarks have been typed, the contents of the
               file are then saved.  You can then delete the file prog.c if  desired,  and  fhist
               would be able to recreate it later.  Or you can leave it there as the working copy
               of the module.

               The -CReate option may be combined with the -Update or -Conditional_Update options
               to create the file if required.

       -Update
               To  save another revision of the module, you use the -Update option.  This updates
               the files in the storage directory to include the  latest  changes.   Remarks  are
               again  asked  for  so  that  you  can  document  why you made this edit.  Thus, to
               continue the example, after editing prog.c, the command:
                      fhist prog.c -u
               will save the changes as a new edit.  This command compares the newest version  of
               the  module  to  the  previous  version, saves the differences in the .e file, and
               copies the new source to the .s file.  At this point, you can  once  again  delete
               the  prog.c  file if desired, and later get back either of the two versions of the
               program.

               The fhist program handles quota or disk full problems during a  create  or  update
               operation  without  damage occurring to the edit history files.  If an edit cannot
               be completed because of such problems, the edit is backed out completely, and  you
               will  get an error message about the disk problem.  There is no need for any error
               recovery in this case, other than retrying the update  when  more  disk  space  is
               available.   The  fhist  program  also  disables  signals during the critical file
               operations, so you do not have to worry about  damaging  the  edit  history  files
               because of attempts to quit out of the program.

               The -CReate option may be combined with the -Update or -Conditional_Update options
               to create the file if required.

       -Input filename
               In either the -CReate or -Update options, the file containing the new  version  of
               the  module  defaults  to the same name as the module.  In the example, the module
               prog.c was created and updated from the data in the file prog.c.   When  you  wish
               the  data  to  come  from  some  other  file, you can use the -Input option, which
               specifies the input file to use for the data.   For  example,  if  you  wanted  to
               update prog.c, but from a filename called newprog.c, then the command:
                      fhist prog.c -u -i newprog.c
               would save a new revision of module prog.c, but with the data that was in the file
               newprog.c.  In this case, the file prog.c  does  not  have  to  exist,  and  isn't
               referenced  even  if  it did exist.  Again, once the update is complete, you could
               delete the newprog.c file if desired and then later you can retrieve its contents.

       -Remarks
               Remarks can be read from a file instead of from the terminal.  The -Remarks option
               can  be  used  to specify a file name containing the remarks.  If there is no file
               name following the -Remarks option, then no remarks at all are used.  The command:
                      fhist prog.c -u -r
               would create a new revision of prog.c without asking for  or  saving  any  remarks
               about the edit.

       -Remark_String text
               It  is also possible to specify the remarks directly on the command line.  You may
               only use this option once.

       -Extract [ edit ]
               To retrieve a previous revision of a module, you specify the name  of  the  module
               and  use  the -Extract option to specify the edit number you want retrieved.  Edit
               numbers are assigned sequentially starting with 1.  Thus the  initial  version  of
               the  module  has  edit  number  1, the first revision has edit number 2, and so on
               until the latest revision.  If the -Extract option is not  used,  or  if  no  edit
               number  is  supplied for it, then the latest edit number is extracted.  Therefore,
               this is the default action if no options at all are specified.

               Edit numbers can also be zero, negative, or be a name  with  an  optional  offset.
               The  number  zero represents the latest edit number, and negative numbers indicate
               edit numbers backwards from the latest edit number.   Edit  names  represent  edit
               numbers  whose  name had been set by using the -Name option.  For example, if edit
               number 10 was associated with the name foo, then the edit name foo represents  10,
               foo‐4  represents  edit number6, and foo+2 represents edit number 12.  The special
               reserved names oldest and newest refer to the oldest and newest  versions  of  the
               module in the edit history.

               As an example of retrievals, assume that you have saved ten versions of the module
               prog.c.  The following commands will then extract the versions of  the  file  with
               the specified edit numbers:

               fhist prog.c
                       version 10 (the latest)

               fhist prog.c -e 9
                       version 9 (the version just prior)

               fhist prog.c -e oldest
                       version 1 (the oldest version)

               fhist prog.c -e -2
                       version 8 (latest version - 2)

               The  output  filename  is  again defaulted to the module name.  So when the module
               prog.c is extracted, the specified version of the module is written to the  prog.c
               file.

               In  order  to  prevent accidental overwriting of a file, the fhist program will by
               default ask you if overwriting is permitted if that would occur.  A common mistake
               is to edit prog.c, and then try to update the module, but forget to specify the -u
               option.  Then the fhist program would try to extract the  newest  version  of  the
               module,  and  thus  overwrite  the file with the new changes.  Asking the question
               allows you to notice your mistake, and prevent the overwriting.

       -Output filename
               You can change the output filename using the -Output option.  Thus, the command:
                      fhist prog.c -o newprog.c
               will extract the latest version of the module prog.c, and put  it  into  the  file
               newprog.c.  Once again, the file "prog.c" is ignored, whether or not it existed.

       -Force_Write
               This  option  will  force  overwriting  of  the  file,  thus  never  asking you if
               overwriting is permitted.  This is often useful in shell scripts, or when you  are
               sure that you want to overwrite any existing file.

       -No_Write
               This  option  is the no‐overwrite option, and will cause any existing files to not
               be overwritten, again without asking you.  This is useful if you already have some
               of  the modules in your directory, and you want to extract the rest of the modules
               without overwriting the ones you already have.  Specifying  both  -Fore_Write  and
               -No_Write is an error.

       -Terminal [ edit ]
               This  option is used to output an extracted module to the standard output, instead
               of writing it to a file.  This is useful in order  to  view  the  beginning  of  a
               version  of the file.  This can be interrupted if you do not want to see the whole
               file.

       -Modify number
               When extracting a file, the fhist program looks for and updates special  character
               sequences  in  the  first few lines of the file.  These special sequences are used
               for documentation purposes, such as describing the edit number the file  is  from.
               For  speed  of extraction and updating, these sequences are usually limited to the
               first 25 lines of the file, since the fhist program then does not have to  examine
               the  entire file.  The -Modify option can be used to change the number of lines to
               be modified from the default value of 25.  Specifying zero  totally  disables  the
               special character sequences, whereas specifying a very large number will cause the
               sequences to be checked for each line of the file (and thus slow the fhist program
               down).

               Each special sequence is of the form [# keyword value, keyword value, ..., keyword
               value #] , where each keyword describes an item, and each value is the  value  for
               the  preceding keyword.  The keywords can be in upper or lower case, or both.  The
               single space following the [#, following each comma, and preceding the #] must  be
               present.  If the sequence is wrong, an unknown keyword is used, the line is longer
               than 200 characters, or more than four keywords are used, then the whole line will
               not be changed.  The current keywords which can be used are the following:

               edit    The edit number

               date    The date that the edit was created

               user    The user name of the user who created the edit

               module  The module name

               In  order  to  use this special character sequence, you simply insert it into your
               module inside of a comment (within the first few lines).  When this is  done,  the
               value  parts  of  the  sequence  can  be  null.  For example, if you want to put a
               special sequence into a program called delete.c, then you could edit the first few
               lines as follows:
                      /*
                       * Delete - program to delete files
                       * [# Edit, Date #]
                       */
               When  an  extract  is  done,  the  proper  edit  number and date are automatically
               inserted as the new values.  Thus, if you extract edit 23 of the  module  delete.c
               which had been created on 8 August 89, then the resulting file would begin:
                      /*
                       * Delete - program to delete files
                       * [# Edit 23, Date 8‐Aug‐89 #]
                       */

               When  updating a module, it is never necessary to edit these sequences, as any old
               values will be removed and replaced with the new ones.  Also, when using the -d or
               -du options (described below), lines with these sequences compare as if the values
               were null, and thus will not cause spurious differences.

               During an update, the special character sequences are  read  and  any  edit  value
               found  is compared against the current edit number of the module.  If they differ,
               then the update fails.  This provides an interlock check for the case of two users
               extracting  the  same  version  of  a  file, editing it, and then both updating it
               without knowledge of each other.  In this case, the second user  would  fail,  and
               then  he  can  merge  his  edits  with the previous user's edit and then retry the
               update.  This checking is disabled if  there  is  no  special  character  sequence
               containing   the  edit  keyword,  the  edit  number  value  is  null,  or  if  the
               -Forced_Update option is used to indicate that the check is not needed.

       -No_Keywords
               This option may be used to disable  the  use  of  the  keyword  special  character
               sequences  described above.  Text containing keyword sequences is treated as plain
               text.  Note: the -No_Keywords option does not imply the -BINary option.

       -Name string
               This option is used to associate a name for the newest version of  a  module.   It
               can  be  given  along with the -CReate, -Update, or -Difference_Update options, to
               specify a name for the new version of the module.  It can also be given by  itself
               in  order  to specify a name for the newest version of a module.  Each edit number
               can have many names associated with it, so this will  not  remove  any  previously
               defined  name  for  the  edit.   This  option  is useful to correlate many modules
               together.  For example, when a new version of a program is ready to  be  released,
               you  could  give  each  module of the program the same name release1.  Then in the
               future, you can recreate the sources making up  that  release  by  extracting  the
               edits  with  the  name  release1 for every module.  Edit names cannot begin with a
               digit, and cannot contain plus or minus  signs.   These  rules  prevent  ambiguous
               parsing of edit numbers for the -Extract, -Terminal, -ALL, and -List options.

       -List [ edit1 [ edit2 ]]
               This  option  prints  a  list of edits for the module, giving the user name, date,
               user remarks, and names specified for the edits.  If no edit number  is  supplied,
               then all edits are printed in reverse order.  If a single edit number is supplied,
               then only that edit number is printed.  If two edit numbers are supplied, then all
               edits in the specified range are printed.  The output from this option defaults to
               the terminal.  You can use the -Output option to save the results to a file.

       -Difference [ edit1 [ edit2 ]]
               This option is used to display the differences between two versions of  a  module,
               or  a  file  and  a  version  of a module.  There are three modes for this action,
               depending on how many edit numbers are supplied.  These modes are  illustrated  by
               the following examples:

               fhist foo.c -d
                       Compare latest version against file "foo.c"

               fhist foo.c -d 3
                       Compare version 3 against file "foo.c"

               fhist foo.c -d 3 4
                       Compare version 3 against version 4

               This  option  accepts  the -Input option to specify the file to be compared.  When
               using the -Difference option, the output defaults to the terminal.  Therefore, you
               must  use  -Output if you wish the differences saved to a file.  Using -Quick with
               -Difference will only output a quick  summary  of  the  changes,  instead  of  the
               detailed  changes.   This  summary  only  supplies  the  number of lines inserted,
               deleted, and unchanged between the  files.   Using  -What  with  -Difference  will
               display all of both files, showing in detail what the differences are using change
               bars.

               The -Difference option may need to write one or two temporary files  in  order  to
               extract  old  versions  of  a  module to be compared.  These files have names like
               T$n_nnn .  They are deleted again just before  differences  are  output,  so  that
               stopping  the output before it is complete will not leave these files around.  The
               temporary files are usually written to the current  directory.   If  this  is  not
               reasonable  because  of  permission  or  quota  problems, then you can specify the
               directory for writing the temporary files into.  This  is  done  by  defining  the
               TMPDIR environment variable to be the path of the directory.

       -Difference_Update
               This  option  combines  the  effects  of  the -Difference and -Update options.  It
               displays the differences between a file and the latest version of  a  module.   If
               there  are  any  differences,  it then proceeds to perform an update of the module
               with that file, asking for remarks as usual.  This option is very useful when used
               with  wildcarded  module names.  Then you can update just those modules which were
               changed by an edit session, and see the changes for each module before typing  the
               appropriate remark for each module.

               You  may  specify both of the -Difference and -Update options, or you may use this
               option.  The results are identical.

       -Conditional_Update
               This option conditionally updates a module.  That is, it will only do an update if
               there are any differences between a file and the latest version of a module.  This
               is convenient when related changes are made to many modules in  a  directory,  and
               one command using wildcards can update just those modules that were changed.

               The -CReate option may be combined with the -Update or -Conditional_Update options
               to create the file if required.

       -CLean
               This option is used to remove files which match the newest  versions  of  modules.
               If  a  file  exists which matches the newest version of a module, then the file is
               deleted, otherwise it is kept.  This option is used to clean up a  work  directory
               after  building a new version of a product.  This option is especially useful when
               used with the -ALL option.  It will also accept the -Input  option  to  specify  a
               directory containing the files to be cleaned.

       -CHeck
               This  option  is used to find out if a file does not match the latest version of a
               module.  If so, a message is given.  If the file does  match,  no  output  occurs.
               This option is thus useful to determine which files have been modified and in need
               of updating.  The -ALL option is defaulted for this option, since  it  is  usually
               used for all modules.  For example,
                      fhist -CHeck
               will  report  on all files which are different than the latest modules.  If -Quick
               is specified, then the output will consist of  the  module  names  with  no  other
               output.   This  is  useful  for  the  backquote  operator  in  shell  scripts  for
               referencing the modules which are out of date.  The -CHeck option will also accept
               the -Input option.

       -PRune edit
               This  option is used to permanently remove early edits from an edit history.  This
               is useful if you wish to cut down on the amount of disk space  taken  by  an  edit
               history file, or when you want to start another release of a file, and want a copy
               of the edit history file for that new release.  The option takes an edit number to
               preserve, and all edits in the edit history file before that edit are deleted, and
               can no longer be referenced.  For example, to keep only the current edit plus  the
               previous 10 edits of the module file, you could use the command:
                      fhist file -prune -10
               Since  the -PRune option is unrecoverable (unless backup files are available), the
               fhist program asks the user to verify  that  the  prune  is  really  wanted.   The
               -Forced_Update option can be used to bypass this verification.

       -ALL
               This  option  can  be  used  with any of the action options.  It means perform the
               operation for all modules in the module storage directory.  Alternatively, you can
               specify  multiple  module  names  on  the  command  line,  and the actions will be
               performed with those modules.  You cannot specify both -ALL and module names.

               When using multiple modules or the -ALL option, the  -Input  and  -Output  options
               have  a  slightly  different  meaning.   In  these  cases,  the -Input and -Output
               arguments are a directory name which contains filenames with the same name as  the
               module  names.   If the argument is not a directory, then an error is given.  This
               feature is useful for example, to extract all the modules and place them into some
               remote directory, as in:
                      fhist -all -e -o tempdir

               You  should  be careful when specifying numeric edit numbers for multiple modules.
               Most probably, a particular edit number is not appropriate for  multiple  modules,
               since  changes  corresponding to a particular edit number are not usually related.
               Using named edits avoids these problems.  As an example, if you wanted to  extract
               every  module  which  had  an  edit  that  was  named rev3, then you could use the
               command:
                      fhist -all -e rev3

               Some other useful examples of commands which use multiple modules are:
                      fhist *.c -create
                      fhist -check -all
                      fhist -cu -all

       -Verbose
               This option can be specified with any other action, and outputs status information
               about  the  progress  of the action.  This is useful for debugging of problems, or
               just for amusement when the system is slow or a large file is being processed.  It
               accepts  a  numeric argument to indicate the verbosity for output.  The levels are
               as follows:

               0   No output at all (except for errors).

               1   Single‐line output describing action (default).

               2   Detailed status as action proceeds.

       -Help
               Give some help on how to use the fhist program.

       -VERSion
               Show what version of fhist is running.

       All options may be abbreviated; the abbreviation is documented as the upper case  letters,
       all  lower  case  letters  and  underscores  (_)  are  optional.  You must use consecutive
       sequences of optional letters.

       All options are case insensitive, you may type them in upper  case  or  lower  case  or  a
       combination of both, case is not important.

       For  example: the arguments "-help, "-HELP" and "-h" are all interpreted to mean the -Help
       option.  The  argument  "-hlp"  will  not  be  understood,  because  consecutive  optional
       characters were not supplied.

       Options and other command line arguments may be mixed arbitrarily on the command line.

       The GNU long option names are understood.  Since all option names for fhist are long, this
       means ignoring the extra leading '-'.  The "-option=value" convention is also understood.

FILE NAME EXPANSION

       As a convenience, if a pathname begins with a period and  a  environment  variable  exists
       with  that  name,  then  the  value of the environment variable will be used as the actual
       pathname.   For  example,  if   a   environment   variable   of   .FOO   has   the   value
       this.is.a.long.name, then the command
              fhist -o .FOO
       is actually equivilant to the command
              fhist -o this.is.a.long.name
       If  you  want  to prevent the expansion of a pathname which begins with a period, then you
       can use an alternate form for the pathname, as in:
              fhist -o ./.FOO

BINARY FILES

       In general, fhist can handle all text files you throw at it, even international text  with
       unusual  encodings.   However,  fhist is unable to cope elegantly with files which contain
       the NUL character.

       The fcomp(1) program simply prints a warning, and continues, you  need  to  know  that  it
       converts NUL characters into an 0x80 value before performing the comparison.

       The  fmerge(1)  program  also  converts the NUL character to an 0x80 value before merging,
       after a warning, and any output file will contain this value, rather than the original NUL
       character.

       The  fhist(1)  program,  however,  generates  a fatal error if any input file contains NUL
       characters.  This is intended to protect your source files for  unintentional  corruption.
       Use -BINary for files which absolutely must contain NUL characters.

EXIT STATUS

       The  fhist program will exit with a status of 1 on any error.  The fhist program will only
       exit with a status of 0 if there are no errors.

REFERENCES

       This program is based on the algorithm in
              An O(ND) Difference Algorithm  and  Its  Variations,  Eugene  W.  Myers,  TR  85‐6,
              10‐April‐1985,  Department  of Computer Science, The University of Arizona, Tuscon,
              Arizona 85721.
       See also:
              A File Comparison Program, Webb Miller and Eugene W. Myers, Software  Practice  and
              Experience, Volume 15, No. 11, November 1985.

COPYRIGHT

       fhist version 1.18.D001
       Copyright  (C)  1991,  1992,  1993,  1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002,
       2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009 Peter Miller;

       This program is derived from a work
       Copyright (C) 1990 David I. Bell.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
       the  GNU  General  Public  License  as  published  by the Free Software Foundation; either
       version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

       This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY  WARRANTY;
       without  even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
       See the GNU General Public License for more details.

       You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program.
       If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

AUTHORS

       Peter Miller       Web:   http://miller.emu.id.au/pmiller/
       /\/\*           E‐Mail:   pmiller@opensource.org.au

       David I. Bell      Web:   http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~dbell
                       E‐Mail:   dbell@canb.auug.org.au