23.1 gdbmtool invocation

When started without additional arguments, gdbmtool operates on the default database junk.gdbm. Otherwise, the first argument supplies the name of the database to operate upon. If neither any additional arguments nor the -f (--file) option are given, gdbmtool opens starts interactive shell and receives commands directly from the human operator.

If more than one arguments are given, all arguments past the database name are parsed as gdbmtool commands (see shell, for a description of available commands) and executed in turn. All commands, except the last one, should be terminated with semicolons. Semicolon after the last command is optional. Note, that semicolons should be escaped in order to prevent them from being interpreted by the shell.

Finally, if the -f (--file) option is supplied, its argument specifies the name of the disk file with gdbmtool script. The program will open that file and read commands from it.

The following table summarizes all gdbmtool command line options:

-b size

--block-size=size

Set block size.

-c size

--cache-size=size

Set cache size.

-f file

--file file

Read commands from file, instead of the standard input.

-h

--help

Print a concise help summary.

-N

--norc

Don’t read startup files (see startup files).

-n

--newdb

Create the database.

-l

--no-lock

Disable file locking.

-m

--no-mmap

Disable memory mapping.

-q

--quiet

Don’t print the usual welcome banner at startup. This is the same as setting the variable quiet in the startup file. See quiet.

-r

--read-only

Open the database in read-only mode.

-s

--synchronize

Synchronize to the disk after each write.

-V

--version

Print program version and licensing information and exit.

--usage

Print a terse invocation syntax summary along with a list of available command line options.