harakit/docs/intcmp.1

.\" Copyright (c) 2023–2024 DTB <trinity@trinity.moe>
.\" Copyright (c) 2023–2024 Emma Tebibyte <emma@tebibyte.media>
.\"
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.\" visit <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/>.

.TH intcmp 1

.SH NAME

intcmp \(en compare integers

.SH SYNOPSIS

intcmp
.RB ( -egl )
.RB [ integer ]
.RB [ integer... ]

.SH DESCRIPTION

Compare integers.

.SH USAGE

.B -e
.RS
Permits given integers to be equal to each other. If combined with
.B -g
or
.B -l
, only adjacent integers in the argument sequence can be equal.
.RE

.B -g
.RS
Permits a given integer to be greater than the following integer.
.RE

.B -l
.RS
Permits a given integer to be less than the following integer.
.RE

.SH EXAMPLES

It may help to think of the -e, -g, and -l options as equivalent to the
infix algebraic “=”, “>”, and “<” operators respectively, with each option
putting its symbol between every given integer. The following example is
equivalent to evaluating “1 < 2 < 3”:

.RS
.R intcmp -l 1 2 3
.RE

.SH DIAGNOSTICS

The program will exit with a status code of 0 for a valid expression and with a
code of 1 for an invalid expression.

In the event of an error, a debug message will be printed and the program will
exit with the appropriate sysexits.h(3) error code.

.SH BUGS

There are multiple ways to express compound comparisons; “less than or equal
to” can be -le or -el, for example.

The inequality comparison is -gl or -lg for “less than or greater than”; this
is elegant but unintuitive.

-egl, “equal to or less than or greater than”, exits 0 no matter what for valid
program usage and may be abused to function as an integer validator.
Use str(1) instead.

.SH RATIONALE

The traditional tool for integer comparisons in POSIX and other Unix shells has
been test(1). This tool also handles string comparisons and file scrutiny.
These parts of its functionality have been broken out into multiple utilities.

This program’s functionality may be performed on a POSIX-compliant system with
test(1p).

.SH AUTHOR

Written by DTB <trinity@trinity.moe>.

.SH COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2023 DTB. License AGPLv3+: GNU AGPL version 3 or later
<https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

.SH SEE ALSO

strcmp(1), scrut(1), str(1), test(1p)