picky

Disclaimer

This is a copy of what was once available at http://grail.eecs.csuohio.edu/~somos/picky.html. It was written by Michael Somos. I claim no authorship whatever.

I have updated the README a bit to address some differences in the sense that this is not a tarball but a GitHub repo as well as formatting.

I do not expect to make many changes at all once everything looks well as it's not my program. I'm only making it available for those who want it.

README for picky version 2.6 - 14 Dec 2014

Picky is a simple C program for validating ASCII text files. It is designed to run under UNIX-like systems but all you really need is a C compiler to build an executable program. Michael did not test the program under Windows but it may work. The following files are provided in this repo:

  Makefile   A simple Makefile for compiling the tool.
  picky.1    The man page for picky.
  picky.c    The C source code for picky.
  README.md  This file.

To compile:

For most environments except DOS/Windows the simple Makefile provided will create the executable.

To clone and compile you can do e.g.:

    git clone https://github.com/lcn2/picky
    cd picky
    make

To install:

If you have root privileges you can just run:

    make install

Otherwise, if you do not have root privileges or you just want to install it for your own use, just copy the executable file to some directory you have write privileges to and ensure that that directory is in your $PATH. For the man page copy the picky.1 file to a directory that is in your $MANPATH. For example:

    # if you do not have root privileges, just install under your home:
    #
    mkdir -p -v ~/bin
    cp -v -f picky  ~/bin
    mkdir -p -v ~/man
    mkdir -p -v ~/man/man1
    cp -v -f picky.1 ~/man/man1

To test:

To test the picky files themselves:

    make test

Examples:

The -s means "Trailing white space not okay":

    ./picky -s Makefile

The -t means "Tab anywhere not okay":

    ./picky -t picky.1 picky.c

The -b means "Backspace anywhere okay":

    make test.txt
    ./picky -b test.txt

For more information, see the picky(1) man page for more details:

    man ./picky.1   # if before installing

or:

    man picky       # if after installing

Uninstalling

To uninstall:

    make uninstall

Reporting Security Issues

To report a security issue, please visit "Reporting Security Issues".