wossname

Function

Description

This allows a user to search for keywords or parts of words in the brief documentation (as displayed by a program when it first starts). The program name and the brief description is output. If no words to search for are specified, then details of all the EMBOSS programs are output.

The program has been written on the assumption that most people will use it to quickly find the name of a program based on that program's description, so the output goes to the screen by default.

This program may find some use in automatically generating lists of EMBOSS programs and their groups for Web pages.

Usage

Command line arguments


Input file format

wossname reads the brief descriptions and the program groups from the ACD files. (ACD files control the parameters that the programs expect - don't worry about them unless you are writing EMBOSS programs).

The format of ACD files is documented elsewhere.

Output file format

The results are written out as a simple list preceded by the group that the programs belong to or the word that is being searched for.

If the -html, -prelink and -postlink qualifiers are specified, then the output will be wrapped in HTML tags, ready for inclusion in a Web page. Note that tags such as <HTML>, <BODY>, </BODY> and </HTML> are not output by this program as the list of programs is expected to form only part of the contents of a web page - the rest of the web page must be supplied by the user.

Data files

As noted above, the program ACD files are searched. The average user will not need to worry about this.

Notes

If a program's ACD file does not assign the program to a group, it will be automatically assigned to the group 'ASSORTED'.

A program can belong to more than one group.

The name of this program comes from its use as a favorite word of the author Terry Pratchett. It is used especially by the characters of the parrot in Eric and the dog Gaspode in Moving Pictures and Men at Arms.

References

None.

Warnings

None.

Diagnostic Error Messages

None.

Exit status

It always exits with status 0

Known bugs

None.

Author(s)

History

Target users

Comments