NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | DETAILS | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | COPYING | AUTHORS | COLOPHON

GROG(1)                    General Commands Manual                   GROG(1)

NAME         top

       grog — guess options for a following groff command

SYNOPSIS         top

       grog [-C] [--run] [--warnings] [--ligatures] [ groff-option ....]
            [--] [ filespec ....]
       grog -h | --help
       grog -v | --version

DESCRIPTION         top

       grog reads the input (file names or standard input) and guesses which
       of the groff(1) options are needed to perform the input with the
       groff program.
              The corresponding groff command is usually displayed in
              standard output.  With the option --run, the generated line is
              output into standard error and the generated groff command is
              run on the standard output.

OPTIONS         top

       The option -v or --version prints information on the version number.
       Also -h or --help prints usage information.  Both of these options
       automatically end the grog program.  Other options are thenignored,
       and no groff command line is generated.  The following 3 options are
       the only grog options,
       -C     this option means enabling the groff compatibility mode, which
              is also transfered to the generated groff command line.
       --ligatures
              this option forces to include the arguments -P-y -PU within
              the generated groff command line.
       --run  with this option, the command line is output at standard error
              and then run on the computer.
       --warnings
              with this option, some more warnings are output to standard
              error.
       All other specified short options (words starting with one minus
       character -) are interpreted as groff options or option clusters with
       or without argument.  No space is allowed between options and their
       argument.  Except from the -marg options, all options will be passed
       on, i.e. they are included unchanged in the command for the output
       without effecting the work of grog.
       A filespec argument can either be the name of an existing file or a
       single minus - to mean standard input.  If no filespec is specified
       standard input is read automatically.

DETAILS         top

       grog reads all filespec parameters as a whole.  It tries to guess
       which of the following groff options are required for running the
       input under groff: -e, -g, -G, -j, -J, -p, -R, -s, -t.  -man, -mdoc,
       -mdoc-old, -me, -mm, -mom, and -ms.
       The guessed groff command including those options and the found
       filespec parameters is put on the standard output.
       It is possible to specify arbitrary groff options on the command
       line.  These are passed on the output without change, except for the
       -marg options.
       The groff program has trouble when the wrong -marg option or several
       of these options are specified.  In these cases, grog will print an
       error message and exit with an error code.  It is better to specify
       no -marg option.  Because such an option is only accepted and passed
       when grog does not find any of these options or the same option is
       found.
       If several different -marg options are found by grog an error message
       is produced and the program is terminated with an error code.  But
       the output is written with the wrong options nevertheless.
       Remember that it is not necessary to determine a macro package.  A
       roff file can also be written in the groff language without any macro
       package.  grog will produce an output without an -marg option.
       As groff also works with pure text files without any roff requests,
       grog cannot be used to identify a file to be a roff file.
       The groffer(1) program heavily depends on a working grog.
       The grog source contains two files written in different programming
       languages: grog.pl is the Perl version, while grog.sh is a shell
       script using awk(1).  During the run of make(1), it is determined
       whether the system contains a suitable version of perl(1).  If so,
       grog.pl is transformed into grog; otherwise grog.sh is used instead.

EXAMPLES         top

       * Calling
                grog meintro.me
         results in
                groff -me meintro.me
         So grog recognized that the file meintro.me is written with the -me
         macro package.
       * On the other hand,
                grog pic.ms
         outputs
                groff -p -t -e -ms pic.ms
         Besides determining the macro package -ms, grog recognized that the
         file pic.ms additionally needs -pte, the combination of -p for pic,
         -t for tbl, and -e for eqn.
       * If both of the former example files are combined by the command
                grog meintro.me pic.ms
         an error message is sent to standard error because groff cannot
         work with two different macro packages:
                grog: error: there are several macro packages: -me -ms
         Additionally the corresponding output with the wrong options is
         printed to standard output:
                groff -pte -me -ms meintro.me pic.ms
         But the program is terminated with an error code.
       * The call of
                grog -ksS -Tdvi grnexmpl.g
         contains several groff options that are just passed on the output
         without any interface to grog.  These are the option cluster -ksS
         consisting of -k, -s, and -S; and the option -T with argument dvi.
         The output is
                groff -k -s -S -Tdvi grnexmpl.g
         so no additional option was added by grog.  As no option -marg was
         found by grog this file does not use a macro package.

SEE ALSO         top

       groff(1), groffer(1) troff(1), tbl(1), pic(1), chem(1), eqn(1),
       refer(1), grn(1), grap(1), soelim(1)
              Man-pages of section 1 can be viewed with either
                     $ man name
              for text mode or
                     $ groffer name
              for graphical mode (default is PDF mode).
       groff_me(7), groff_ms(7), groff_mm(7), groff_mom(7), groff_man(7)
              Man-pages of section 7 can be viewed with either with
                     $ man 7 name
              for text mode or
                     $ groffer 7 name
              for graphical mode (default is PDF mode).

COPYING         top

       Copyright © 1989-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
       This file is part of grog, which is part of groff, a free software
       project.  You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
       the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPL2) as published by the
       Free Software Foundation.
       groff is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
       ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
       FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
       The text for GPL2 is available in the internet at GNU copyleft site
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt⟩.

AUTHORS         top

       Written by James Clark.
       Maintained by Werner Lemberg ⟨wl@gnu.org⟩.
       Rewritten and put under GPL by Bernd Warken ⟨groff-
       bernd.warken-72@web.de⟩.

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the groff (GNU troff) project.  Information
       about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩.  If you have a bug report for
       this manual page, see ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩.  This
       page was obtained from the tarball groff-1.22.3.tar.gz fetched from
       ⟨ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/groff/⟩ on 2017-07-05.  If you discover any
       rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe
       there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org
Groff Version 1.22.3           4 November 2014                       GROG(1)

Pages that refer to this page: gperl(1)gpinyin(1)groff(1)groffer(1)roff(7)