2 - GENERAL DSUPDT USAGE
Brackets [] mark optional elements. A pipe ‘|’ inside parentheses, as in (A|B), indicates that either A or B may be used. Options fall into three categories:
specify which task to execute |
|
modify how an action behaves |
|
supply values to the action |
Each option may be given in either its short or long form (e.g., -DS or -Dataset). Some options have alias names for convenience. Option names are case-insensitive, but the values that follow Info options are case-sensitive.
Option -DS specifies a dataset number. When provided as the first argument following dsupdt, the -DS (-Dataset) option name itself may be omitted. Some actions can run without a dataset number; in that case they apply to all available update control or file records across all datasets.
Specify exactly one Action option per execution. Depending on the chosen Action, certain Info options are mandatory, others are optional, and specific Mode options may be applied to alter the action’s behavior.
All options except -IF (-InputFile) may be supplied either on the command line or in input files. Input file names are passed via -IF and can only be given on the command line. See the -IF option description for details on how to format options inside input files. One or more input files may be combined with command-line options. The -IF option name itself may be omitted when a single input file is supplied on the command line and all action and option information is contained within that file.
Info options used with GET actions function as query filters. Four special characters enable more precise filtering — they must be quoted or escaped on the command line to prevent shell interpretation:
‘!’ |
exclude matches; must appear immediately after the option name |
‘<’ |
less-than comparison on the following value |
‘>’ |
greater-than comparison on the following value |
‘<>’ |
range between two values |
Combining ‘!’ and ‘<’ as “-<OptionName>!<OptionValue>” expresses a ‘greater than or equal to OptionValue’ condition.
The description of an individual option is displayed when dsupdt is run as
The description is shown for the option placed either before or after -(h|help). If no option is supplied, or dsupdt is run without arguments, the full document is displayed using the UNIX ‘more’ utility. A hard copy of this document can be printed from the saved file ‘dsupdt.usg’ inside the Python package rda_python_dsupdt.