To start an interactive session, run refdbc with the command:
refdbc [-c pager] [-d database] [-e log-destination] [-F fields] [-g deffile] [-G CSS-file] [-h] [-i IP-address] [-l log-level] [-L log-file] [-p port] [-q] [-R pdfroot] [-T time] [-u name] [-v] [-V] [-w password] [-y confdir]
Unless you specify a password in a configuration file or on the command line, refdba will ask you for a password before you can proceed. refdbc will then display a prompt and wait for you to enter commands:
refdbc: |
To run a refdbc command from the command line, use:
refdbc [-c pager] {-C command-name} {-d database} [-e log-destination] [-F fields] [-g deffile] [-G CSS-file] [-h] [-i IP-address] [-l log-level] [-L log-file] [-p port] [-q] [-T time] [-u name] [-w password] [-y confdir]
This will run the command whose name is specified with the -C switch and return to the command line. In this mode, refdbc can read the input for certain commands from stdin. Any additional command-line options that the internal command recognizes can be specified on the command line. To find out which options you can use, see the command descriptions below.
Tip: If you prefer to just run the commands like addref on the command line, you can (if your shell supports this) create aliases like:
This works in bash and would go into your .bashrc. You can then add references to your database with the following command at the shell prompt:
Remember that you don't have to specify all command-line options each time if you define the values in .refdbcrc.
Use the -d option to specify the database that you want to work with. In an interactive session you can also set and change the default database with the selectdb command.
The -F option specifies the default fields that are to be displayed in a getref query.
The -g option can be used to add some default fields to all references that are added or updated. The argument deffile is the filename of a RIS file containing these additional fields. refdbc first tries the filename as is, so it should be a valid relative or absolute path. If the file is not found, refdb looks for the file in $HOME. The command aborts if the file cannot be found.
Use the -G option to specify the URL of a Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) file. This file will be used to customize the HTML output of the getref command. The URL can be either a local path (e.g. refdb.css, /home/myname/custom.css) or the web address of a file on a web server (e.g. http://www.mycomp.com/refdb.css).
The -R option specifies the root path of your collection of electronic offprints. See the information about pdfroot for further details.
The purpose of all other command-line switches is explained in Common command-line options.
Note: If you want to run refdbc unattended in batch-mode from a script, you should make sure that you do not specify a pager or a pipe command for an interactive program for the output. This would block the script until you hit a button. To this end you can add the
-c stdoutoption to the command line to disable any pipe or pager commands that you may have in the .refdbrc file.You may also want to redirect the stderr output to a file for logging purposes.
The exit code is 0 if all went fine. It will be 1 if the command (when run in batch mode) or the last command (when run in interactive mode) returned an error, or if there was a general error condition during startup like a lack of available memory.