Recutils, from GNU Project, is a free command-line toolset for performing basic relational database operations on plain text files including field typing, auto-increment, and join. Storage files known as recfiles conform to a file format defined by the toolset. As plain text, recfiles can be edited via a text editor (as long it supports the character encoding). Various other software libraries support the format.
A recfile is a text file with empty lines between records. Each field of a record is a line starting with the field name and a colon. Multiple record types can be in a single file. A long line can be wrapped (i.e. for readability).
Fields can be marked as mandatory and also have their value limited to a set of predefined values.
Tools include: – Search for and print fields from records matching a query – Insert a record, or replace existing records – Delete a record, or delete a set of records – Check, fix, and sort rec files – Add or update individual fields
Example The following is formatted as a recfile.
%rec: Text %type: Year int
Author: Doug McIlroy Year: 1964 Note: The Origin of Unix Pipes
Title: Unix Text Processing Author: Dale Dougherty Author: Tim O'Reilly Year: 1987 Publisher: Hayden Books
Author: William Shakespeare Title: Hamlet Year: 1599 Year: 1600 Year: 1601
The following command selects records where a year field is greater than 1900 and outputs the author field values. The first two records have a year greater than 1900 so are selected. The first record has a single author and the second has two, so the result is three author names.
$ recsel -e 'Year > "1900"' -p Author Author: Doug McIlroy Author: Dale Dougherty Author: Tim O'Reilly
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