pathmerge -- Command

Merge sorted paths files
/usr/lib/mail/pathmerge file ...

pathmerge  reads the  sorted path  files,  each of  which was  generated by
command pathalias, merges the path information they contain, and writes the
result  onto   the  standard   output.   It   normally  is  used   only  by
administrators of  busy systems, to  maintain the path  information used by
smail.

In its  output, pathalias  writes one  path given for  each host  name.  It
gives precedence in paths to the  files that appear earlier in the argument
list.   The file  name `-'  represents  the standard  input; this  lets you
mingle input from files with input from the standard input.

As  an example  of the  use of  pathmerge, consider  two files,  forces and
paths, whose contents, respectively, are

    ihnp4    cbosgd!ihnp4!%s
    muts12   muts12!%s
    sun      sun!%s

and:

    cbosgd   cbosgd!%s
    ihnp4    ihnp4!%s
    sun      ames!sun!%s
    uunet    uunet!%s

The command

    pathmerge forces paths

writes the following onto the standard output:

    cbosgd   cbosgd!%s
    ihnp4    cbosgd!ihnp4!%s
    muts12   muts12!%s
    sun      sun!%s
    uunet    uunet!%s

For the  purposes of pathmerge, a  host name is terminated a  by a space, a
tab,  a colon, or  a newline.   The number  of files that  you can  pass to
pathmerge is limited by the number of available file descriptors, as all of
the files are opened and read simultaneously.

See Also

commands,
mail [overview],
mkline,
mkpath,
mksort,
mkdbm,
pathalias,
smail

Notes

This command is not used by the implementation of smail that COHERENT uses.
It is included, however, for compatibility with other implementations.

Copyright © 1987, 1988 Ronald S. Karr and Landon Curt Noll.  Copyright
© 1992 Ronald S. Karr.

For  details on  the distribution rights  and restrictions  associated with
this software, see file COPYING, which  is included with the source code to
the smail system; or type the command: smail -bc.

© 2012 by Stephen A. Ness