Form Command [FORM]
Displays information about a self-describing file created by programs such as Suprtool. These programs store information about the record layout such as field names, data types, length.
FORM [ $LP | $LPA | $LPB ] [ filename ]
(Default: filename = current Text file)
If filename is omitted and a workfile is currently active, Qedit uses the name of the Text file (see Verify Keep). An external filename can be specified. In this case, the name must be the name of the data file.
If the file is not self-describing, Qedit displays the following message:
Error: File is not self-describing.Self-describing files on Hp-UX have 2 components: the data file and the data description file. The name of the data description file is the name of the data file followed by the .sd extension. For example,
/home/user1/mydata.dat { data }
/home/user1/mydata.dat.sd { data description }The Form output looks like this:
Self-describing information for /home/user1/mydata.dat
File: /home/user1/mydata.dat (SD Version B.00.00) Has linefeeds
Entry: Offset
CHAR-FIELD X5 1 <<Sort# 1 >>
INT-FIELD I1 6
DBL-FIELD I2 8
PACKED-FIELD P12 12
PACKED*-FIELD P12 18
QUAD-FIELD I4 24
ID-FIELD I1 32
LOGICAL-FIELD K1 34
DBLLOG-FIELD K2 36
ZONED-FIELD Z5 40
Entry Length: 80 Blocking: 1LP Listing
$lp, $lpa and $lpb send output to a device associated with an environment variable of the same name. For example, to print to the device called Laser with the $lpa option, you must set the |4LPA| environment variable to Laser, as in |2export lpa=laser|. If the LP environment variable is not set, Qedit will attempt to send the output to the default system printer. But if the LPA or LPB environment variables are not set with a valid device name, an error will occur.