On 24 Feb 2008, alex wallis outgrape:
> wondering though, above you mentioned the -n switch what does that do?
-n is in POSIX (the collaboratively-developed standard which, as much as
anything, defines `what is Unix', and which Cygwin conforms to to a
large extent). POSIX says:
` -n The same as -l, except that the owner's UID and GID numbers shall
be written, rather than the associated character strings.'
> Also a few times on list I have noticed another switch mentioned called -j
> what does that switch do?
POSIX defines no -j switch to ls, but that doesn't mean that some Unix
or other might not have added one as an extension, so I checked a
few. Linux doesn't have -j (GNU coreutils 6.10); nor does FreeBSD, nor
Solaris, nor Tru64, nor HP-UX 11, nor IRIX. (Then I stopped looking,
because it's sort of obsessional and creepy to check this many Unix
variants, even if it did only take me 45 seconds. I could have checked
AIX, but AIX isn't Unix, it's Unix as built by a space alien who's never
seen Unix, but has had it described to him by another space alien who
saw Unix running several years back but then got hit by a car and has
consequently forgotten almost everything about it.)
> Just a thought for the wiki, maybe someone could put together a page
> listing all the switches and arguments that could be used in the
> compiling of rockbox, along with what they do as a kind of reference.
The docs, well, there are lots. It depends which bit you want
documentation on.
POSIX is here: <http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/toc.htm>.
The commands will be supported on just about any Unixlike OS, but note
that like many embedded systems, Rockbox uses what the C Standard calls
a `freestanding implementation' of C, which means it can get away
without implementing most of the runtime library. So the pages
documenting the POSIX C programming interface are unlikely to be very
useful.
The (enormous) manual for GCC, giving command-line switches, language
extensions, and so on, is here (pick your version):
<http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/>.
The docs for GNU make are here:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/index.html>.
(I don't know of any decent online C tutorials. Like any programming
language the only way to get really good at it is lots and lots of
practice.)
