HP-UX Reference (11i v2 04/09) - 1 User Commands N-Z (vol 2)

n
nis+(1) nis+(1)
Simple Names
Simple names consist of a series of labels that are separated by the dot (
.) character. Each label is com-
posed of printable characters from the ISO Latin 1 set. Each label can be of any nonzero length, provided
that the fully qualified name is fewer than
NIS_MAXNAMELEN
octets including the separating dots. (See
<rpcsvc/nis.h>
for the actual value of NIS_MAXNAMELEN
in the current release.) Labels that con-
tain special characters (see Grammar) must be quoted.
The NIS+ namespace is organized as a singly rooted tree. Simple names identify nodes within this tree.
These names are constructed such that the leftmost label in a name identifies the leaf node and all of the
labels to the right of the leaf identify that object’s parent node. The parent node is referred to as the
leaf’s directory. This is a naming directory and should not be confused with a file system directory.
For example, the name
example.simple.name.
is a simple name with three labels, where example
is the leaf node in this name, the directory of this leaf is
simple.name. which by itself is a simple
name. The leaf of which is
simple and its directory is simply name.
The function nis_leaf_of (3N) returns the first label of a simple name. The function nis_domain_of(3N)
returns the name of the directory that contains the leaf. Iterative use of these two functions can break a
simple name into each of its label components.
The name dot (
.) is reserved to name the global root of the namespace. For systems that are connected
to the Internet, this global root will be served by a Domain Name Service. When an NIS+ server is serv-
ing a root directory whose name is not dot (
.), this directory is referred to as a local root.
NIS+ names are said to be fully qualified when the name includes all of the labels identifying all of the
directories, up to the global root. Names without the trailing dot are called partially qualified.
Indexed Names
Indexed names are compound names that are composed of a search criterion and a simple name. The
search criterion component is used to select entries from a table; the simple name component is used to
identify the NIS+ table that is to be searched. The search criterion is a series of column names and their
desired values enclosed in bracket (
[]) characters. These criteria take the following form:
[column_name=value, column_name=value , ... ]
A search criterion is combined with a simple name to form an indexed name by concatenating the two
parts, separated by a comma (,) character as follows.
[ search-criterion
],table.directory.
When multiple column name/value pairs are present in the search criterion, only those entries in the
table that have the appropriate value in all columns specified are returned. When no column name/value
pairs are specified in the search criterion,
[], all entries in the table are returned.
Grammar
The following text represents a context-free grammar that defines the set of legal NIS+ names. The ter-
minals in this grammar are the characters dot (
.), open bracket ([), close bracket (
]), comma (,), equals
(
=), and whitespace. Angle brackets (<>), which delineate nonterminals, are not part of the grammar.
The character vertical bar (|) is used to separate alternate productions and should be read as "this pro-
duction OR this production".
name ::= . | <simple name>|<indexed name>
simple name ::= <string>. | <string>.<simple name>
indexed name ::= <search criterion>,<simple name>
search criterion ::= [ <attribute list>]
attribute list ::= <attribute>|<attribute>,<attribute list>
attribute ::= <string>=<string>
ISO Latin 1 character set except the
character slash (/). The initial character
may not be a terminal character or the
characters at (@), plus (+), or hyphen (-).
string ::=
Terminals that appear in strings must be quoted with double quotes (
"string"). The double quote charac-
ter may be included in a string by doubling it ("").
Name Expansion
The NIS+ service only accepts fully qualified names. However, since such names may be unwieldy, the
NIS+ commands in section 1 employ a set of standard expansion rules that will attempt to fully qualify a
Section 1−−632 Hewlett-Packard Company − 2 − HP-UX 11i Version 2: September 2004