\"      Id: mansearch.3,v 1.5 2017/03/30 22:22:05 schwarze Exp
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\" Copyright (c) 2014 Ingo Schwarze <[email protected]>
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Dd March 30, 2017
Dt MANSEARCH 3
Os
Sh NAME
Nm mansearch
Nd search manual page databases
Sh SYNOPSIS
In stdint.h
In manconf.h
In mansearch.h
Ft int
Fo mansearch
Fa "const struct mansearch *search"
Fa "const struct manpaths *paths"
Fa "int argc"
Fa "char *argv[]"
Fa "struct manpage **res"
Fa "size_t *sz"
Fc
Sh DESCRIPTION
The
Fn mansearch
function returns information about manuals matching a search query from a
Xr mandoc.db 5
database.
Pp
The query arguments are as follows:
Bl -tag -width Ds
It Fa "const struct mansearch *search"
Search options, defined in
In mansearch.h .
It Fa "const struct manpaths *paths"
Directories to be searched, defined in
In manconf.h .
It Fa "int argc" , "char *argv[]"
Search criteria, usually taken from the command line.
El
Pp
The output arguments are as follows:
Bl -tag -width Ds
It Fa "struct manpage **res"
Returns a pointer to an array of result structures defined in
In mansearch.h .
The user is expected to call
Xr free 3
on the
Va file ,
Va names ,
and
Va output
fields of all structures, as well as the
Fa res
array itself.
It Fa "size_t *sz"
Returns the number of result structures contained in
Fa res .
El
Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
For each manual page tree, the search is done in two steps.
In the first step, a list of pages matching the search criteria is built.
In the second step, the requested information about these pages is
retrieved from the database and assembled into the
Fa res
array.
Pp
All function mentioned here are defined in the file
Pa mansearch.c .
Ss Finding matches
Command line parsing is done by the function
Fn exprcomp
building a singly linked list of
Vt expr
structures, using the helper functions
Fn expr_and
and
Fn exprterm .
Ss Assembling the results
The names, sections, and architectures of the manuals found
are assembled into the
Va names
field of the result structure by the function
Fn buildnames .
Sh FILES
Bl -tag -width mandoc.db -compact
It Pa mandoc.db
The manual page database.
El
Sh SEE ALSO
Xr apropos 1 ,
Xr mandoc.db 5 ,
Xr makewhatis 8
Sh HISTORY
The
Fn mansearch
subsystem first appeared in
Ox 5.6 .
Sh AUTHORS
An -nosplit
A module to search manual page databases was first written by
An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt [email protected]
in 2011, at first using the Berkeley DB;
he rewrote it for SQLite3 in 2012, and
An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt [email protected]
removed the dependency on SQLite3 in 2016.