Command Line Syntax
The generic syntax is:
w3c [ options ] [ docaddress [ keywords ]]
The order of the options is not important and options can in fact be specified on either side of any
docaddress. Currently available options are:-
Getting Help
- -help or -?
- Load this file from directly into the browser
- -v [ a | b | c | g | p | s | t | u ]
- Verbose mode: Gives a running commentary on the program's attempts to read data in various
ways. As the amount of verbose output is substantial, the
-v
option can now be followed
by zero, one or more of the following flags (without space) in order to differentiate the verbose
output generated:
- a: Anchor relevant information
- b: Bindings to local file system
- c: Cache trace
- g: SGML trace
- p: Protocol module information
- s: SGML/HTML relevant information
- t: Thread trace
- u: URI relevant information
The -v
option without any appended options shows all
trace messages. An example is
-vpt
showing thread and protocol trace messages
- -version
- Prints out the version number of the software, and the version
number of the WWW library, and exits.
Main Modes of execution
- -
- A minus sign with no trailing characters indicates that the
program will accept HTML format
input from the standard input. This allows www to be used as a filter
from html to plain text for example. Relative links in the input are
parsed as though the address of the document was that of the home page
(or docaddress if specified). Implies non-interactive mode.
- -cl
- Counting content length of the output. This flag appends the
Content-Length counter stream to the output stream so that everything
is counted. This works exactly like piping the output into
wc.
- -h host
- Establish a telnet connection to the remote host specified. This
implies a "secure mode" execution where all references to the local
file system are canceled.
- -n
- Non-interactive mode. Outputs the formatted document to the
standard output, then exits. Pages are delimited with form feed (FF)
characters.
- -o [ file ]
- Redirects output to specified file. The default value is
"www-out". This mode forced non-interactive mode
- -single
- Singlethreaded mode. If this flag is set then the browser uses
blocking, non interruptible I/O in interactive mode. Non-interactive
mode always uses blocking I/O.
HTTP methods
The Line Mode Browser supports several HTTP
methods. The default value is "GET". These options imply
non-interactive execution.
- -get
- Gets a document. This is the default operation!
- -head
- Returns the header information (if any) but not the document
- -delete
- Deletes a resource (or makes it unavailable) for future references.
- -put
- Uploads a document from either the local file system or a remote HTTP server to a remote HTTP
server (destination) using PUT method. You must indicate the destination using the
-dest command line option.
- -post
- Uploads a document from either the local file system or a remote HTTP server to a remote HTTP
server (destination) using POST method. You must indicate the destination using the
-dest command line option.
- -link
- Being implemented
- -unlink
- Being implemented
Data format conversions (non-interactive)
- -from [ format ]
- Only if the Line mode Browser is executed as a filter (using the
"-" option), this option indicates the desired input format. The
default value is "text/html".
- -to [ format ]
- Format is the output format for www. Default value is
"www/present" but may be changed according to the HTTP-specifications.
Two common output formats are "www/source" that is the source without
MIME-headers and "www/mime" that is the source with the MIME-header if
any. Though also "text/latex" is possible which generates a LaTeX
version of the (HTML) document. This can then be compiled using latex
and put out as Postscript. Default value is presenting the output to
the user.
- -source
- Display the original source (without any MIME-headers) of a
document instead of parsing it.
Directory Listings
- -d 1*( t | b | r | n | s | y )
- This directive can be used to modify the directory listing
layout. More than one option can be specified but they might be
mutually exclusive. The following options are available (withour
space):
- t: Place any readme file at the top of the list (default)
- b: Place any readme file at the bottom of the list
- r: Ignore any readme file
- n: Directory listings are not allowed
- s: Directory listings are only allowed in the directories where a
file ".www_browsable" is located. The content of the file
is of no importance.
- y: Directory listings are always allowed (default)
An example is
-dts
makes selective directory listings and places a README file at the top
Destination URL
- -dest
- You can specify a (relative) destination URL, for example for the operations
PUT
and POST
using this flag. For example:
-dest http://myserver/newfiles/foo.html
Configuration Options
- -l [ file ]
- Specifies a log file with a list of visited documents. The default
value is "www-log"
- -r <file>
- Rule file, a.k.a. configuration file. If this is specified, a rule file may be used to map URLs,
and to set up other aspects of the behavior of the browser. Many rule files may be given with
successive -r options, and a default rule file name may be given using the WWW_CONFIG
environment variable.
- -timeout <n>
- Timeout in seconds on sockets
If present, the next argument (docaddress) is the
hypertext address , of the document at which you want to start browsing. You may want to define
an alias for www followed by name of your favorite index. Any
further command line arguments are taken as keywords. The first argument must refer to an index in
this case. The index is searched for entries matching the keywords, and a list of matching entries
is displayed.
Henrik Frystyk, libwww@w3.org, November 1995