The advanced software technology department has been collecting useful C routines in a single library called libast. libast is used by nmake, the nmake cpp (which is mainly based on another library (libpp)), CIA (C information abstractor from Robin Chen), and a collection of other /bin and /usr/bin commands that benefit from concentrating functionality in libast. More detail is available in the man pages. libast contains: (1) routines to support a generic environment for a variety of UNIX operating system variants (2) routines that update standard libc routines (3) routines shared between several commands If you already have nmake 2.0 or newer installed then use `nmake install' from this directory, otherwise use ship/shipin from the root of the distribution directory tree. Some of the routines not found in section 3: hash: generic, scoped hash table support hashalloc create a hash table or push new scope hashdump debug dump of one or all hash tables hashfree free a hashalloc()'d table hashlook low level name lookup hashscan entry generator for scoped table scan hashsize explicitly change table size (usually automatic) hashwalk apply function to each table entry memhash return hash code for n-char chunk of memory strhash return hash code for null terminated string include/ast: libast support headers align.h compile time type alignmnent support dirent.h POSIX directory(3) interface definitions error.h error() interface definitions ftw.h ftwalk() interface definitions hash.h hash*() interface definitions ls.h strls() interface definitions re.h re*() interface definitions tar.h POSIX ustar format interface definitions tm.h tm*() interface definitions misc: cmdargs apply a sequence of cmd line option parsers cmdopen like popen() but stdin and stdout are specified cvtatoe convert ASCII to EBCDIC cvtetoa convert EBCDIC to ASCII error output generic error and trace messages ftwalk an ftw(3) that works -- used in new tw(1) getcwd uses $PWD if ok, doesn't use /bin/pwd getshell return full path of shell for cmdopen() ooptget optget() for obsolete ar(1) and tar(1) options optget YA getopt(3) but no argc or error message output pathaccess find file with specific acces on list of dirs pathcanon canonicalize path name in place pathcmd return full path name of executable using $PATH pathroot determine `related root' directory for command perror uses strerror() readargs append each line of file to argv[0] re: egrep(1) and ed(1) style re's from V9 (not the good awk(1) algorithm) recomp compile re pattern reerror report re*() errors reexec match string using compiled re resub ed(1) style substitute using last reexec() string: chresc return next char in string converting \ sequences ctoi convert char constant string to int strcopy like strcpy(3) but returns end of destination strdup malloc(3) and strcpy(3) smashed together strerror return error message string given errno stresc convert \ sequences in string in place streval evaluate C expression in string strls ls -l format support strmatch Korn shell file pattern match strmode return ls -l style output given st.st_mode strsignal return signal id string given SIG* number strtape convert generic tape unit to /dev/* file token generate space separated tokens in string tm: time conversion support tmdate convert date string to time_t tmform format time_t to date string tmmake return current time_t tmtime convert struct tm to time_t