RevOnline: New version of Shell Command Help

[Peter Brigham MD]

On Jan 6, 2011, at 5:09 PM, Mike Bonner wrote:

> Closest thing I know of would be apropos. Not a complete list, but a  
> more
> 'targeted' list. Could implement a search box that returns an  
> apropos list
> (on mac and linux) and use that for a clickable.
>
> On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 3:02 PM, Peter Brigham MD <pmbrig at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> On Jan 5, 2011, at 2:22 PM, Bob Sneidar wrote:
>>
>> Thanks pretty useful if you know already what the command is you  
>> need help
>>> with. Looks like you are getting the man pages via a shell call  
>>> yourself.
>>>
>>> What would make this marketable is if there was a way to list all  
>>> the
>>> shell commands available to the system and present them to the  
>>> user in a
>>> list, have the user be able to click on a shell command and have  
>>> the man
>>> page load, and then be able to insert the command into a rev  
>>> script with the
>>> proper LiveCode syntax. I would pay money for that!
>>>
>>> Bob
>>>
>>
>> That was just my reaction to the stack -- great if you know what  
>> you're
>> doing already, but you have to know shell commands. (I dropped it  
>> into my
>> Plugins folder anyway....)
>>
>> Is there a shell command to get all the shell commands on the  
>> currently
>> running system? If so, it should be a snap to expand the stack  
>> accordingly.
>>
>> On Dec 28, 2010, at 1:55 AM, Phil Davis wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi folks,
>>>>
>>>> I just uploaded a new version of the Shell() Command Help plugin

I'm playing with this to see if I can come up with something. One  
problem: when I use
    put shell("man cp") into fld "f"
I get output like this:

CP(1)                     BSD General Commands  
Manual                    CP(1)

NNAAMMEE
      ccpp -- copy files

SSYYNNOOPPSSIISS
      ccpp [--RR [--HH | --LL | --PP]] [--ffii | --nn] [--ppvvXX]  
_s_o_u_r_c_e___f_i_l_e _t_a_r_g_e_t___f_i_l_e
      ccpp [--RR [--HH | --LL | --PP]] [--ffii | --nn] [--ppvvXX]  
_s_o_u_r_c_e___f_i_l_e _._._. _t_a_r_g_e_t___d_i_r_e_c_t_o_r_y

DDEESSCCRRIIPPTTIIOONN
      In the first synopsis form, the ccpp utility copies the contents  
of the
      _s_o_u_r_c_e___f_i_l_e to the _t_a_r_g_e_t___f_i_l_e.  In the  
second synopsis form, the con-
      tents of each named _s_o_u_r_c_e___f_i_l_e is copied to the  
destination
      _t_a_r_g_e_t___d_i_r_e_c_t_o_r_y.  The names of the files  
themselves are not changed.  If
      ccpp detects an attempt to copy a file to itself, the copy will  
fail.

      The following options are available:

      --ff    For each existing destination pathname, remove it and  
create a new
            file, without prompting for confirmation regardless of its  
permis-
            sions.  (The --ff option overrides any previous --nn  
option.)

            The target file is not unlinked before the copy.  Thus,  
any exist-
            ing access rights will be retained.
<snip>

As you can see, the section titles and commands consist of doubled  
letters. How can I get a good clear text out of this? Does it have  
something to do with the text encoding? Pardon my ignorance, I'm a  
newbie to messing around with system calls.

-- Peter

Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig