David A. Curry's index, now for Utf-8 and local collation order, for Mac Os X, but portable. Uses ICU for i8n and l10n.

This is a tremendously useful little tool, for creating a small "databases" you needed yesterday. It takes two secs, from the thought of it would be cool to have a "database" before you have defined the database and are eagerly entering records, records that you can later filter with awk and other tools. The duality of the tool, working both as a "screen" program, and as a filter, makes it very useful, in supporting note-taking in a diverging stage of whatever, without a thought about structuring there and then. But you can later converge the semantics of your "data", by filtering the information you have gathered through it.

It uses utf-8 so accents aren't any trouble. It also sorts things accordingly to your locale settings, and uses Perl reg-exps should you like to use them thanks to ICU both those, and the regexps described in man re_format(7) works.

Database is really not the correct term:, the "database" consists of lines, relating to fields but it serves as a database semantically, and it can be a good format to collect various tidbits of information in, superimposing a structure upon information gathering. It is also a good prototyping tools, to help you hone the fields you want in real databases. You also have all the *nix tools available to prototype relations, reports, and what not. The main advantage of this tool, given its stone-age user interface, is with what speed you can create a database, and have a reasonably comfortable interface for putting data into it. Gaining a structured information collection within mere seconds! At the same time it is reasonably easy to filter the information. You can have filters working on the database to filter on the criteria you'll like. There are a great many commandline options to help you "massage" your data, and you can also export your data as csv. See the man page (man1/index.1 for all the options). or [Index html man page] (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6829111/index.html "Index.1")

I have implemented the calculation of buffer sizes that should work at all times, there are however other limits that needs to be adjusted, and maybe there are some reallocations to be added for max-memory efficiency given the fact that I have been more concerned about the calulations to work at all times, than being memory efficient.

Edit Having implemented the autotools for creating cross platform configure scripts and compilation, I am now revising stuff, and removing the last (small) memory deallocation bugs.

I'll also have to implement the config.h, and specifying different default text editors and such for different platforms when $EDITOR isn't specified.

Maybe there is something at miss when it comes to adhering to the GNU coding standard, but not much.

It is easier to build this on OS X than any other platform, since it was developed here. But from now onwards, it is recommonded that you use the configure script, that generates makefiles.

The configure script supports staged installs, so that you can create a folder, and make the tool in there, not mingling with the source. You can of course "make install" from this directory.

You'll need Ncurses 5.9 or later in addtion to what is delivered with OS X in order to build.

Ncurses 5.9 can be easily downloaded from http://www.macports.org. for OS X

I have no hopes about this being easy to install under cygwin or anything but since GNU autotools are used, I suppose it wont't be impossible.

If this is your case, and you face problems, don't hesitate to contact me (through "issues").

Thanks to GNU autotools I have high hopes that this package will just install on other *nixes. If it don't, don't hesitate. ("issues"), and I'll see what I can do, swiftly!

You need to install and compile Ncurses 5.9 and ICU 4.9 or later Having this in shape, and the paths to where it is installed, then it is time to perform the installation.

1. configure
2. make all
3. sudo make install

Stand in the root of the project. (Same directory as you found this document.) It is your call whether you want to create a folder to build in or build directly in the source folder.

I'll take this a little bit slow in case this is the first time you are using a configure script. Go to Configuring the project if I am boring you.

First of all: you can configure an "autoconfiscated" projects by two means, environment variables that steers the compilation, and prefixes to the configure script that controls the details of the compilation and installation,in this case, configure can do so much more, but that is all that is needed for this project.

The C-compiler environment uses a series of environment variables for setting flags, and finding stuff, you can set those variables with your particular options.

The variables are:

• CFLAGS : This variable should contain the compiler options like -g, -O2 and so on. Those are the settings you want to set in additon to those set in the makefile. (-g is always set, if you really want to strip out the debug information, then "make install-strip" afterwards.)

• CPPFLAGS : This variable contains flags and defines for the C-preprocessor. The most important ones coming to my mind is ther -Iincludepath

• LDFLAGS : This variable contains flags for the linking stager of the compilation, or linker if a separate linker is used. The most common usage is to specify the path to the libraries, you may have to specify the paths to something like -L/opt/lib, or similar to make configure find the ICU-libs and the ncursesw libraries.

• LIBS : This variable is for specifying libraries directly you will have no usage of this variable during this configure.

You specify the variable before you execute the ./configure script. Like this: CFLAGS="-g -O3" (CFLAGS="-arch= X86_64" is another example.)

--help, --libdir, --includedir, --prefix, --bindir, --mandir and --docdir works.

You should really try ./configure --help to see all the options, I'll go through the most important settings or those that will work here prioritized by what I think is the most important ones to the lesser.

In the examples I use the path ../ in front of configure, imagining I am standing in a "build" folder.

• --libdir :This option tells configure where to look for your libraries Example: ../configure --libdir=/opt/lib --libdir=/usr/lib Tells configure to first check /opt/lib, then /usr/lib for libraries.

• --includedir :This option tells configure where to look for your include files. Example: ../configure --includedir=/opt/include --includedir=/usr/include Tells configure to first check /opt/include then /usr/include for header files.

• --prefix : This prefix option, is kind of a general option, to specify the "root" of the installation. there should be a bin, and a share directory under this path, or they will be created, under the share directory, there should be a man/man1..N tree, or at least man/man1 will be created to have a place for index.1 It will also be created a share/index directory for storing documents relating to index, and samples.

Example: ../configure --prefix=/opt

Tells configure to install index, man1/index.1, samples and other docs into /opt/bin/index, /opt/share/man/man1/index.1 /opt/share/doc/index/samples and /opt/share/doc (the docs, including this).

or a=~/opt ../configure --prefix=$a Works the same way but uses another root: (~/opt).

Tells configure to install index and auxuillary files under ~/opt I recommend to place the stuff here or in ~/usr, this is called "account install" This makes it easy to take the software with you with an operating system upgrade since it resides in your homefolder, it will also never conflict with any packet-manager.

• --bindir This is a more selective option it works like the --prefix option, but works only for specifying the path to put the binary index. Handy to use if you want to specify stuff in different "trees".

Example: ../configure --bindir=/opt/bin

• --mandir This is a more selective option it works like the --prefix option, but works only for specifying the path to put the index man file.. Example:

• --docdir This is a more selective option it works like the --prefix option, but works only for specifying the path to put the docs and samples files. Handy to use if you want to specify stuff in different "trees". You can of course specify a place you'll later trash. :) Example: ../configure --docdir=/opt/share/doc/index

Ok, that's all about the configure options, --help included, you don't have much use for any of the others when configuring this package.

Make rules not war!

• all: Compiles the program.

• install: Installs the package.

• uninstall: Uninstalls the package, save directories created during installation.

• install-strip: Like install but strips the executable for debug information.

• clean: Deletes all files in the current directory that where created during the build.

• distclean: Deletes all files in the current directory that where made by building or configuring this program.

• dist: Create a distribution tar file of this package.

• distcheck: Checks if the dist rule behaves sanely.

If you want more information about those make rules, feel free to read the GNU Coding Standard chp. 7.

If there is anything here that is fuzzy, boring or unclear, file an issue. ;)

Enjoy

Tommy/McUsr