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NAME

       dbview - View dBase III files

SYNOPSIS

       dbview  [-b|--browse]  [-d  delim|  --delimiter  delim]  [-D|--deleted]
       [-e|--description] [-h|--help] [-i|--info]  [-o|--omit]  [-v|--version]
       [-r|--reserve] [-t|--trim] dbfile

DESCRIPTION

       Dbview  is  a  little  tool that will display dBase III files.  You can
       also use it to convert your old .dbf files for further use  with  Unix.
       It should also work with dBase IV files, but this is mostly untested.

       By  default  dbview displays the contents of a dBase III or IV database
       file.  This is be done by displaying both the name of the field  itself
       and its value.  At the end of every record a newline is appended.

OPTIONS

       If  no  option  given  dbview  only  displays  the database in its most
       friendly way.

       --browse, -b
              switches into browse mode.  Using this mode no  fieldnames  will
              be  displayed,  instead  every record will displayed in one line
              using a delimiter to separate fields.

       --delimiter, -d delimiter
              The default delimiter in browse mode is the  colon  sign  ‘‘:’’.
              This  parameter  overrides it.  This can be useful especially if
              you plan to examine the output with scripts.

       --deleted, -D
              displays deleted records as well as the  delete  state  in  each
              record in the database.

       --description, -e
              displays the field description of the database.

       --help, -h
              displays a complete (or short) help screen.

       --info, -i
              displays   some  (partially  technical)  information  about  the
              database like number of records and length of each record.

       --omit, -o
              omits displaying the whole database.  Using this  parameter  can
              be useful if you’re only interested in the structure.

       --reserve, -r
              Normally  fieldnames  are converted into a more friendly format.
              They  are  stored  in  capital  letters,  but  that  looks  like
              shouting.  This parameter supresses the conversion.

       --trim, -t
              When  this  option is specified, leading and trailing spaces are
              omitted.  This might be useful when in browse mode.

       --version, -v
              displays version and exits.

NOTES

       As dBase is DOS, umlauts  are  stored  using  a  different  code  table
       (namely ASCII) than most modern unices (namely ANSI).  If you encounter
       such a file, I would recommend piping the output through recode(1) with
       ibmpc:latin1 as it’s argument.

       If  you  want  to examine the output generated by the browse mode, just
       take cut(1) and set its delimiter to the used delimiter or take  awk(1)
       and continue.

COPYRIGHT

       Dbview  is  free  software. It is based on routines from unknown source
       that I found on nic.funet.fi in /pub/msdos/languages/c as dbase.c.  The
       file contained the following notice:

       These functions are provided by Valour Software as a gift.

       I  have modified and included this file and wrote a skeleton around it.
       All together provides a powerful tool for dBase  III  and  IV  database
       manipulation under Unix.

       I  mainly  have  written  this  program, because I’ve got several dbase
       files containing important information for me.  As I won’t  go  running
       DOS  everytime  I  need some of the stored information, I had to find a
       viewer that runs unter Unix, resp. Linux, but unfortunately didn’t find
       one.  So it was my turn.

       This  package  as  a  whole  is published under the GNU Public License,
       which is a great invention.

       It wasn’t the intention to write a freaking  viewer  and  reinvent  the
       wheel  again.   Instead dbview is intend to be used in conjunction with
       your favourite unix text utilities like cut, recode and more.

       Martin Schulze
       Infodrom Oldenburg
       joey@infodrom.north.de

SEE ALSO

       recode(1), more(1), awk(1), cut(1).