PLDES(1)

NAME
pl, pldes, plser, plmerge, plparse, pl2link    - property list tools

SYNOPSIS
pldes filename(s)
plget key[morekeys]
plser [ -formatfmt ] filename(s)
plmerge [ destination-file ] [ input-file(s) ]
plparse filename(s)
pl2link input-file [ destination-file ]
pl -input [ input-file ]  -output [ destination-file ]

DESCRIPTION

Property lists in GNUstep are hierarchical lists of values or attribute-value pairs. Programmatically they are represented by instances of the NSString, NSData, NSArray, or NSDictionary (most common) class (which may contain other instances of such classes). These instances can be serialized as binary objects to form a persistent representation. In addition, there are two alternative human-readable representations. The first, utilized in NeXTstep and OpenStep, utilizes a text format with equals signs expressing attribute-value bindings and set braces expressing hierarchical organization. The second, often (uninformatively) referred to as "plist" format, is in XML and is used by Mac OS X. The tools described here are utilities for manipulating the various persistent property list representations as files.

pldes filename(s)
    Converts a binary serialised property list (class instance) to a text representation.

plget key
    Reads a text representation of a dictionary in property list format as standard input, extracts the string value held in that dictionary with the specified key, and writes the result to standard output. Multiple keys may be used to extract values from nested dictionaries.

plser [ -format format ] filename(s)
    Converts a text representation of a property list to a binary serialized representation, or to another selected format.

plmerge [ destination-file ] [ input-file(s) ]
    Merges text property lists into a single property list

plparse filename(s)
    Checks that each file contains a valid text representation of a property list.

pl2link input-file [ destination-file ]
    Produces a desktop link file for KDE and Gnome for the given text representation of a property list.

pl -input [ input-file ]
    Takes the serialized plist represented by input-file and outputs it to standard output.

pl -output [ destination-file ]
    Takes a plist from standard input and serializes it into destination-file.

SEE ALSO
defaults(1)

HISTORY
Written 1999-2000.

This manual page first appeared in gnustep-base 1.9.2 (March 2004).

AUTHORS
pldes, plget, plparse, plser were written by Richard Frith-Macdonald <rfm@gnu.org>.

plmerge was written by Jonathan Gapen <jagapen@whitewater.chem.wisc.edu>.

pl2link was written by Fred Kiefer <FredKiefer@gmx.de>.

pl was written by Gregory Casamento <greg_casamento@yahoo.com>.