.\" $Id: curly.man,v 3.8 2012/02/29 23:51:34 ksb Exp $
.\" by Kevin Braunsdorf
.\" $Compile: Display%h
.\" $Display: ${groff:-groff} -Tascii -man %f |${PAGER:-less}
.\" $Display(*): ${groff:-groff} -T%s -man %f
.\" $Install: %b -mDeinstall %o %f && cp %f $DESTDIR/usr/local/man/man1/curly.1 && ln $DESTDIR/usr/local/man/man1/curly.1 $DESTDIR/usr/local/man/man1/uncurly.1
.\" $Deinstall: ${rm-rm} -f $DESTDIR/usr/local/man/[cm]a[nt]1/curly.1* $DESTDIR/usr/local/man/[cm]a[nt]1/uncurly.1*
.TH CURLY 1 LOCAL
.SH NAME
curly, uncurly - expand or build csh-like path expressions
.SH SYNOPSIS
.ds PN "curly
.ds PA "uncurly
\fI\*(PN\fP [\fIexpressions\fP]
.br
\fI\*(PN\fP \fB\-h\fP
.br
\fI\*(PN\fP \fB\-V\fP
.br
\fI\*(PA\fP [\-\fIdepth\fP] [\fInames\fP]
.br
\fI\*(PA\fP \fB\-h\fP
.br
\fI\*(PA\fP \fB\-V\fP

.SH DESCRIPTION
.B Curly
expands a \fBcsh\fP(1) curly brace expression.
Such an expression is of the form
.RS
prefix{E1,E2,E3}suffix
.RE
which expands to
.RS
.nf
prefixE1suffix
prefixE2suffix
prefixE3suffix
.fi
.RE
any subexpressions are also expanded.
.PP
.B Uncurly
compresses a given path expression into a minimal curly expression.
Thus
.RS
\fI\*(PA\fP ab.c ab.h de.c de.h ef.c ef.h
.RE
produces this output
.RS
{ab,de,ef}.{c,h}
.RE
.PP
Either product will run in a filter mode if no arguments are provided.

.SH OPTIONS
Both programs take the standard help (\fB\-h\fP) and version (\fB\-V\fP)
options.
.P
In addition \fB\*(PA\fP takes an integer \-\fIdepth\fP option to limit the
depth of the compression search.

.SH EXAMPLES
.TP
cd; find . \-depth \-print | uncurly >/tmp/files.u
save a compressed list of the files in my home directory in /tmp/files.u.
.TP
\fI\*(PN\fP </tmp/files.u | xargs my-tool
Use \fBxargs\fP to run my-tool on each of the saved names in /tmp/files.u.
.TP
sort /tmp/mylist | uncurly \-2 >/tmp/mylist.u
Compress a sorted list of the names in /tmp/mylist, but limit the compression
to 2 nested levels of curlies.

.SH BUGS
Files with curly braces in their names are an obvious problem.  An option
to allow reordering the input elements to improve compression would be
nifty.  For example swapping \*(lqab.h\*(rq and \*(lqab.c\*(rq in the
first example creates a much longer pattern:
.nf
$ uncurly \fBab.h ab.c\fP de.c de.h ef.c ef.h
ab.{h,c}
{de,ef}.{c,h}
.fi
Given the liberty to reorder the input list we could reduce that to
the much sorter string (by sorting the suffix expressions).

.SH AUTHOR
Kevin Braunsdorf
.br
curly @ ksb.npcguild.org.noSpam

.SH "SEE ALSO"
.hlm 0
csh(1), find(1), xargs(1), glob(1l), xapply(1l), oue(1l)