HP-UX Reference (11i v2 07/12) - 1 User Commands N-Z (vol 2)

newform(1) newform(1)

An error message and program exit occur if this option is used on a ﬁle without a tab

on each line. The characters sheared off are saved internally until all other options

speciﬁed are applied to that line. The characters are then added at the end of the pro-

cessed line.

For example, to convert a ﬁle with leading digits, one or more tabs, and text on each

line, to a ﬁle beginning with the text, all tabs after the ﬁrst expanded to spaces, pad-

ded with spaces out to column 72 (or truncated to column 72), and the leading digits

placed starting at column 73, the command would be:

newform -s -i -l -a -e ﬁle-name

RETURN VALUE

newform returns one of the following values upon completion:

0 No errors encountered.

1 An error occurred.

DIAGNOSTICS

All diagnostics are fatal.

usage: ...

newform was called with a bad option.

not -s format

There was no tab on one line.

can’t open file

Self-explanatory.

internal line too long

A line exceeds 512 characters after being expanded in the internal work buffer.

tabspec in error

A tab speciﬁcation is incorrectly formatted, or speciﬁed tab stops are not ascending.

tabspec indirection illegal

A tabspec read from a ﬁle (or standard input) must not contain a tabspec referencing another ﬁle

(or standard input).

WARNINGS

newform normally only keeps track of physical characters; however, for the -i and -o options,

newform keeps track of backspaces in order to line up tabs in the appropriate logical columns.

newform does not prompt the user if a tabspec is to be read from the standard input (by use of

-i-- or

-o--).

If the -f option is used, and the last -o option speciﬁed was -o--

, and was preceded by either a -o--

or a -i--, the tab speciﬁcation format line will be incorrect.