Archie Manual

ARCHIE(1L) MISC. REFERENCE MANUAL PAGES ARCHIE(1L)

NAME

archie - an Internet archive server listing service

SYNOPSIS

archie

DESCRIPTION

The archie system is a program which can query a database

maintained by the Computer Science Department of McGill

University. The database contains a list of software which

is available by means of anonymous ftp(1) to hosts connected

to the Internet network.

The system can be accessed in an interactive fashion or via

electronic mail (email). In order use the interactive sys-

tem:

1) Connect to host quiche.cs.mcgill.ca (132.206.2.3 or

132.206.51.1) with telnet(1).

2) Login as user archie (no capitals, no password

required). The system prints a banner message and

status report.

3) Type ``help'' for further information.

In order to use the email interface, send requests to

archie@cs.mcgill.ca

Send the word ``help'' in a message for available commands

and features. Please note that this is an automated inter-

face: no human sees it. See "THE EMAIL INTERFACE" section

below.

Comments and suggestions should be sent to

archie-l@cs.mcgill.ca

Adimistrative requests such as adding a site to the database

or modifying the Software Description Database should be

sent to

archie-admin@cs.mcgill.ca

THE INTERACTIVE INTERFACE

Variables

archie has a number of variables which modify its behavior.

The values of these variables may be changed using the set

command. archie distinguishes between three types of vari-

able:

boolean

which may be either set or unset.

numeric

representing an integer within a pre-determined range.

string

whose value is a string of characters (which may or may

not be restricted).

The following variables are currently recognized

autologout

By default, archie will exit after one hour of idle

time. This value can be changed though this variable,

which represents in minutes, the length of idle time

before you are automatically logged out.

The minimum and maximum values are 1 and 300,

representing one minute through five hours.

Example:

set autologout 45

will cause you to be automatically logged out after 45

minutes of idle time.

mailto

A string variable whose value is a mail address, or

comma-separated list of addresses. Note that there must

not be any spaces within the list of addresses. If this

is set and the mail command is issued with no argu-

ments, then the output of the last command is mailed to

that address.

Example:

set mailto user@frobozz.com

Example:

set mailto user1@hello.edu,user2@goodbye.com

All the various Internet addressing styles are under-

stood. BITNET sites should use the convention

user@sitename.bitnet

UUCP addresses can be specified as

user@sitename.uucp

maxhits

A numeric variable whose value is the maximum number of

matches you want the prog command to generate.

If archie seems to be slow, or you don't want a lot of

output this can be set to a small value. ``maxhits''

must be within the range 0 to 1000. The default value

is 1000.

Example:

set maxhits 100

prog will now stop after 100 matches have been found

pager

A boolean variable which, when set, tells archie to

filter all output through the pager less(1L). When

using the pager you may also want to set the term vari-

able to your terminal type (see term variable).

Example:

set pager

This variable determines the kind of search performed

on the database by the prog command, providing flexi-

bilty on search times and types.

search is a string variable whose value is one of the

following:

sub

Substring (case insensitive). A simple, everyday

substring search. A match occurs if the the file

(or directory) name in the database contains the

user-given substring.

Example:

The pattern ``is'' will match ``islington''

and ``this'' and ``poison''

subcase

Substring (case sensitive). As above but the case

of the strings involved becomes significant.

Example:

``TeX'' will match ``LaTeX'' but not ``Latex''

or ``TExTroff''.

exact

Exact match. The fastest search method of all.

The restriction is that the user string (the argu-

ment to the prog command) has to exactly match

(including case) the string in the database. This

is provided for those of who who know just what

you are looking for.

For example, if you wanted to know where all the

``xlock.tar.Z'' files were, this is the kind of

search to use.

regex

This is the default search method. Searches the

database with the user (search) string which is

given in the form of an ed(1) regular expression.

NOTE: Unless specifically anchored to the begin-

ning (with ^) or end (with $) of a line, ed(1)

regular expressions (effectively) have ``.*''

prepended and appended to them. For example, it is

not necessary to say

prog .*xnlock.*

since

prog xnlock

will suffice. Thus the regex match becomes a sim-

ple substring match.

sortby

This variable describes how the output from the prog

command is to be ordered. It can have one of 5 values

(and their associated reverse orders). For each method,

the ``natural'' sort order (or at least, what we con-

sider to be the natural order) is the default.

hostname

Output is sorted on the archive hostname in lexi-

cal order.

Reverse order rhostname

time

Output is sorted with the most recent modifcation

times of the found file/directory names coming

first (youngest -> oldest).

Reverse order rtime

size

Output is sorted by the size of the found

files/directories, largest first.

Reverse order rsize

filename

Sorted in file/directory name lexical order.

Reverse order rfilename

none

This is the DEFAULT order.

Unsorted. There is no reverse order although rnone

is accepted for symmetry.

Typing the keyboard interrupt character ( Ctl-C for

most people on UNIX) during a search will cause the

search to aborted. The results up to that time will be

sorted (determined by the value of the sortby variable)

and the results output. The output phase may itself be

aborted by typing the abort character a second time.

status

This boolean variable determines if the status-line

will be displayed while the prog command is searching

through the database. If set (which is the default

value) then the number of matches and percentage of the

database searched is displayed. Otherwise no output is

given until the search is complete.

term This variable tells archie what type of terminal you

are using, and optionally its size in rows and columns.

This information is used by the pager.

The usage is:

set term <terminal-type> [<#rows> [<#columns>]]

That is, the terminal type is required, but the number

of rows and columns is optional. You may specify a

value for rows only, but if you want to change the

number of columns you must give a value for both rows

and columns. The default values for rows and columns

are 24 and 80.

Examples:

set term vt100

set term xterm 60

set term xterm 24 100

Regular Expressions

archie uses ed(1) regular expressions in a number of

commands.

A regular expression, on the one hand, is a string like

any other; a sequence of characters. On the other

hand, special characters within the string have certain

functions which make regular expressions useful when

trying to match portions of other strings. In the fol-

lowing discussion and examples, a string containing a

regular expression will be called the ``pattern'', and

the string against which it is to be matched is called

the ``reference string''.

Regular expressions allow one to search for ``all

strings ending with the letters ize

'' or ``all strings beginning with a number between 1

and 3 and ending in a comma''.

In order to accomplish this, regular expressions co-opt

the use of some characters to have special meaning.

They also provide for these characters to lose their

special meaning if the user so desires. The rules for

regular expresssion are

c Any character c matches itself unless it has been

assigned other special meaning as listed below. Most

special characters can be escaped (made to lose its

special meaning), by placing the character '\' in front

of it. This doesn't apply to '{' which is non-special

until it is escaped. Thus although '*' normally has

special meaning the string '\*' matches itself.

Example:

The pattern

acdef

matches

s83acdeffff or acdefsecs or acdefsecs

but not

accdef or aacde1f

That is it will any string that contains ``acdef'' any-

where in the reference string.

Example:

Normally the characters '*' and '$' are special,

but the pattern

a\*bse\$

acts as above. That is any reference string containing

``*abse$'' as a substring will be flagged as a match.

. A period matches any character except the newline

character. This is known as the wildcard character.

Example:

The pattern

....

will match any 4 characters in the reference string,

except a newline character.

^ If `^' appears at the begining of the pattern then it

is said to ``anchor'' the match to the beginning of the

line. That is, the reference string must start with the

pattern following the `^'. If this character appears

anywhere else other than at the beginning of the line,

then it is no longer considered special, and matches

itself as any non-special character would. Similarly if

it starts a string but is escaped, it matches itself.

Example:

The pattern

^efghi

Will match

efghi or efghijlk

but not

abcefghi

That is the pattern will match only those reference

strings starting with ``efghi''. Just containing the

substring is not sufficient.

$ Occurring at the end of the pattern, this character

``anchors'' the pattern to the end of the line (refer-

ence string). A '$' occurring anywhere else in the pat-

tern is regarded as a non-special. Similarly if it is

at the end of the pattern but is escaped, it is non-

special.

Example:

The pattern

efghi$

Will match

efghi or abcdefghi

but not

efghijkl

That is the pattern will match only those reference

strings ending with ``efghi''. Just containing the sub-

string is not sufficient.

\< This sequence in the pattern causes the one character

regular expression following it only to match something

at the beginning of a word: the beginning of a line or

just before a letter, digit or underline character, or

just after a charcter which is not one of these.

Example:

The pattern

\<abc

would match the last 'abc' in the reference string

@hijabc#+abc

but not the first since the first 'abc' did not start

on a ``word'' boundary.

\> Constrains the one-character regular expression fol-

lowing it to be at the end of a ``word'' as defined

above.

[string]

One or more characters within square brackets. This

pattern matches any single character within the brack-

ets. The caret, '^', has a special meaning if it is the

first character in the series: the pattern will match

any character other than one in the list.

Example:

The pattern

[^abc]

Will match any character except 'a', 'b' or 'c'.

To match a right bracket, ']', in the list it must be

put first:

[]ab01]

For a caret, '^', in the list it can appear anywhere

but first.

[ab^01]

the caret loses its special meaning.

The '-' character is special within square brackets. It

is interpreted as a range of characters (in the ASCII

character set) and will match any single character

within that range. '[a-z]' matches any lower case

letter. The '-' can be made non special by placing it

first or last within the square brackets.

The characters '$', '*' and '.' are not special within

square brackets.

Example:

The pattern

[ab01]

matches a single occurence of a character from the set

'a', 'b', '0', '1'.

Example:

The pattern

[^ab01]

will match any single character other than 'a', 'b',

'0', '1'.

Example :

The pattern

[a0-9b]

which matches one of 'a', 'b' or a digit between 0 and

9 inclusive.

Example :

The pattern

[^a0-9b.$]

means any single character not 'a', 'b' '.' , '$' or a

digit between 0 and 9 inclusive.

* An asterisk following a regular expression in the pat-

tern has the effect of matching zero or more

occurrences of that expression.

Example:

The pattern

means zero or more occurrences of the character 'a'.

Example:

The pattern

[A-Z]*

means zero or more occurrences of the upper case alpha-

bet.

\{m\}

\{m,\}

\{m,n\}

A one-character regular expression followed by one of

the three of these constructions causes a range of

occurrences of that regular expression to be matched.

If it is followed by \{m\} where m is a non-negative

integer between 0 and 255 (inclusive), then exactly m

occurrences of that regular expression are matched. If

followed by \{m,\}, then at least m occurrences are

matched. Finally, if it is followed by \{m,n\} (where

n is a non-negative integer between 0 and 255 and where

n > m), then between m and n occurrences of the expres-

sion are matched.

Example:

The pattern

ab\{3\}

would match any substring in the reference string of an

'a' followed by exactly 3 'b's.

Example:

The pattern

ab\{3,\}

would match any substring in the reference string of an

'a' followed by at least 3 'b's.

Example:

The pattern

ab\{3,5\}

would match any substring in the reference string of an

'a' followed by at least 3 but at most 5 'b's.

Common Problems with Regular Expression

(1) When matching a substring it is not necessary to use

the wildcard character to match the part of the refer-

ence string preceeding and following the substring.

Example:

The pattern

abcd

will match any reference string containing this pat-

tern. It is not necessary to use

.*abcd.*

as the pattern.

(2) In order to constrain a pattern to the entire reference

pattern, use the the construction:

^pattern$

(3) The easiest way to obtain case insensitivity in a regu-

lar expression is to use the '[]' operator. For exam-

ple, a pattern to match the word ``hello'' regarless of

the case of the letters would be:

[Hh][Ee][Ll][Ll][Oo]

Commands

Arguments to commands shown here in square brackets

'[]' are optional. All others are mandatory. help List

the valid archie commands.

list [pattern]

This command provides a list of the sites currently

stored in the database and the time at which they were

last updated. There is an optional regular expression

argument to limit the list to specific sites.

Note that the numerical (IP) address associated with a

site name is valid at the listed time, but since they

do occasionally change, it is possible that a

discrepancy may occur until that site is updated in our

database. Furthermore, the listed IP address is the

primary, as listed in the DNS database: secondary

addresses are not stored.

Example:

list

will list all sites in the database, while

list \.de$

lists all German sites.

mail [address1,[address2...]]

With an argument (or arguments) the output of the last

command is mailed to the specified address or comma-

separated list of addresses. No spaces must appear

anywhere in the address list.

Example:

mail user1@hello.edu,user2@goodbye.com

Without an argument the output of the last command is

sent to the address specified in the mailto variable.

Example:

mail

All the various Internet addressing styles are under-

stood. BITNET sites should use the convention

user@sitename.bitnet

UUCP address can be specified as

user@sitename.uucp

prog pattern

Find all occurrences of programs with names matching

pattern. How pattern is interpreted depends on the

value of the search variable. The output lists the

names of hosts with matching entries, the size of the

matching program, its last modification date and its

path.

The results are sorted according to the value of ths

sortby variable, and are limited in number by the max-

hits variable.

set variable-name

This command allows you to set one of archie's vari-

ables. Their values affect how archie interacts with

the user.

boolean variables are either set or unset

Example:

set pager

numeric variables take a number within a certain range

Example:

set maxhits 500

string variables take a (possibly restricted) string

value

Example:

set sortby time

See entries on unset and show .

show [variable-name]

This command is used to display the value of a partic-

ular variable, or all variables. With an argument it

will display the value of that variable, without an

argument it will display the value of all variables.

Example:

show maxhits

site sitename

This command allows you to get a full listing of an

ftp(1) site in the archie database. The output format

is similar to that of UNIX ls(1) long recursive (-lR)

listing.

Example:

site col.hp.com

unset variable

This causes the specified variable to have no value.

This means that it will not be used by archie until it

has been given a value with the set command.

Note: this may cause ``counter-intuitive'' behaviour in

some cases (e.g. in the case of maxhits ). Although

one might expect prog to print matches without regard

for any limit, this is not the case. If the value of

maxhits is not available it will merely fall back to

some internal default.

whatis substring

This command searches the archie Software Description

Database for the given substring, with case being

ignored. This database consists of names and short

descriptions of many of the software packages, docu-

ments (like RFCs and educational material) and data

files that are stored on the Internet.

Example:

whatis uucp

in part gives as a result:

findpath.sh UUCP Pathfinder

logfile-stats UUCP LOGFILE analyzer

mapstats UUCP map statistics program

We welcome and encourage additions and corrections to

this database and depend on the archie user community

to keep it uptodate. To make your contribution to this

database, mail to

archie-admin@cs.mcgill.ca

For new additions, please keep the description to 25

words or less.

THE EMAIL INTERFACE

The archie email interface currently accepts a limited sub-

set of the interactive interface commands, plus a few of its

own. Currently variables are not supported in the email

interface.

Requests to this server should be addressed to

archie@cs.mcgill.ca

Note that the ``Subject:'' line in incoming mail is pro-

cessed as if it were part of the main message body. No spe-

cial keywords are required.

Note that the help command is exclusive. All other commands

in the same message are ignored.

The server recognizes the following commands. If a message

not containing any valid requests or an empty message is

received, it will be considered to be a help request.

path path

This lets the requestor override the address that would

normally be extracted from the header. If you do not

hear from the archive server within a couple of hours

might consider adding a path command to your request.

The path describes how to mail a message from

cs.mcgill.ca to your address. cs.mcgill.ca is fully

connected to the Internet.

BITNET users can use the convention

user@site.bitnet

UUCP user can use the convention

user@site.uucp

help Will send you a message describing how to use the email

interface (basically this section).

prog <reg expr1> [<reg exp2> ...]

A search of the archie database is performed with each

<reg exp> (a regular expression as defined by ed(1)) in

turn, and any matches found are returned to the reques-

tor. Note that multiple <reg exp> may be placed on one

line, in which case the results will be mailed back to

you in one message. If you have multiple prog lines,

then multiple messages will be returned, one for each

line [This doesn't work as expected at the moment...

stay tuned].

Any regular expression containing spaces must be quoted

with single (') or double (") quotes. ALL OTHER ed(1)

rules must be followed.

NOTE: The searches are CASE SENSITIVE. The ability to

change this will hopefully be added soon.

The prog command is currently executed as if the search

variable were set to regex.

site <site name> | <site IP address>

A listing of the given <site name> will be returned.

The fully qualified domain name or IP address may be

used.

compress

ALL of your files in the current mail message will run

through compress(1) and uuencode(1). When you receive

the reply, remove everything before the ``begin'' line

and run it through uudecode(1). This will produce a .Z

file. You can then run uncompress(1) on this file and

get the results of your request.

quit Nothing past this point is interpreted. This is pro-

vided so that the occasional lost soul whose signature

contains a line that looks like a command can still use

the server without getting a bogus response.

THE ARCHIE DATABASE

The archie database subsystem maintains a list of about 600

Internet ftp(1) archive sites. Each night, the database

subsystem executes an anonymous ftp(1) to a subset of these

sites and fetches a recursive directory listing (or a file

containing the recursive directory listing if this exists).

Currently, each site gets updated approximately once a

month. The directory listings are stored on

quiche.cs.mcgill.ca (132.206.2.3), where they are available

to the Internet community via anonymous ftp(1). They appear

in the directory ~ftp/archie/listings in compressed form.

BUGS

1) Only UNIX sites are included in the database.

2) The user can not limit searches to specific sites.

3) There is no graphical user interface.

4) There is no way to abort the help facility completely.

It is hoped that all these will change in coming versions.

LONG TERM PLANS

The archie system is regarded as being ``in development''

and is not being released to outside sites at present. The

current database requires about 70 MB of disk storage, and

the updates and searches put a noticeable load on the Sun

4/280 on which it operating. Eventually, we hope to distri-

bute archie to several sites around the world.

We welcome comments and suggestions; please send them to

archie-l@cs.mcgill.ca.

Search This Blog

Strange Texts

Archie Manual

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

BOTTOM LIVE script

Fawlty Towers script for "A Touch of Class"

MENSA IQ test with answers