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co(1)
Free Software Foundation
NAME
  co - check out RCS revisions
SYNOPSIS
  co [options] file...
OPTIONS
  -r[rev]
      retrieves the latest revision whose number is less than or equal to
      rev. If rev indicates a branch rather than a revision, the latest
      revision on that branch is retrieved. If rev is omitted, the latest
      revision on the default branch (see the -b option of rcs(1)) is
      retrieved. If rev is $, co determines the revision number from keyword
      values in the working file. Otherwise, a revision is composed of one or
      more numeric or symbolic fields separated by periods.  The numeric
      equivalent of a symbolic field is specified with the -n option of the
      commands ci(1) and rcs(1).
  -l[rev]
      same as -r, except that it also locks the retrieved revision for the
      caller.
  -u[rev]
      same as -r, except that it unlocks the retrieved revision if it was
      locked by the caller.  If rev is omitted, -u retrieves the revision
      locked by the caller, if there is one; otherwise, it retrieves the
      latest revision on the default branch.
  -f[rev]
      forces the overwriting of the working file; useful in connection with
      -q. See also FILE MODES below.
  -kkv
      Generate keyword strings using the default form, e.g.  $Revision:
      1.1.6.2 $ for the Revision keyword. A locker's name is inserted in the
      value of the Header, Id, and Locker keyword strings only as a file is
      being locked, i.e. by ci -l and co -l. This is the default.
  -kkvl
      Like -kkv, except that a locker's name is always inserted if the given
      revision is currently locked.
  -kk Generate only keyword names in keyword strings; omit their values. See
      KEYWORD SUBSTITUTION below. For example, for the Revision keyword,
      generate the string $Revision$ instead of $Revision: 1.1.6.2$. This
      option is useful to ignore differences due to keyword substitution when
      comparing different revisions of a file.
  -ko Generate the old keyword string, present in the working file just
      before it was checked in. For example, for the Revision keyword,
      generate the string $Revision: 1.1 $ instead of $Revision: 1.1.6.2 $ if
      that is how the string appeared when the file was checked in.  This can
      be useful for binary file formats that cannot tolerate any changes to
      substrings that happen to take the form of keyword strings.
  -kv Generate only keyword values for keyword strings. For example, for the
      Revision keyword, generate the string 1.1.6.2 instead of $Revision:
      1.1.6.2 $. This can help generate files in programming languages where
      it is hard to strip keyword delimiters like $Revision: $ from a string.
      However, further keyword substitution cannot be performed once the
      keyword names are removed, so this option should be used with care.
      Because of this danger of losing keywords, this option cannot be
      combined with -l, and the owner write permission of the working file is
      turned off; to edit the file later, check it out again without -kv.
  -p[rev]
      prints the retrieved revision on the standard output rather than
      storing it in the working file. This option is useful when co is part
      of a pipe.
  -q[rev]
      quiet mode; diagnostics are not printed.
  -I[rev]
      interactive mode; the user is prompted and questioned even if the
      standard input is not a terminal.
  -ddate
      retrieves the latest revision on the selected branch whose checkin
      date/time is less than or equal to date.	The date and time may be
      given in free format. The time zone LT stands for local time; other
      common time zone names are understood. For example, the following dates
      are equivalent if local time is January 11, 1990, 8pm Pacific Standard
      Time, eight hours west of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC):
	   8:00 pm lt
	   4:00 AM, Jan. 12, 1990	     note: default is UTC
	   1990/01/12 04:00:00		     RCS date format
	   Thu Jan 11 20:00:00 1990 LT	     output of ctime(3) + LT
	   Thu Jan 11 20:00:00 PST 1990	     output of date(1)
	   Fri Jan 12 04:00:00 GMT 1990
	   Thu, 11 Jan 1990 20:00:00 -0800
	   Fri-JST, 1990, 1pm Jan 12
	   12-January-1990, 04:00-WET
      Most fields in the date and time may be defaulted. The default time
      zone is UTC. The other defaults are determined in the order year,
      month, day, hour, minute, and second (most to least significant).	 At
      least one of these fields must be provided.  For omitted fields that
      are of higher significance than the highest provided field, the time
      zone's current values are assumed.  For all other omitted fields, the
      lowest possible values are assumed. For example, the date 20, 10:30
      defaults to 10:30:00 UTC of the 20th of the UTC time zone's current
      month and year. The date/time must be quoted if it contains spaces.
  -M[rev]
      Set the modification time on the new working file to be the date of the
      retrieved revision. Use this option with care; it can confuse make(1).
  -sstate
      retrieves the latest revision on the selected branch whose state is set
      to state.
  -w[login]
      retrieves the latest revision on the selected branch which was checked
      in by the user with login name login.  If the argument login is
      omitted, the caller's login is assumed.
  -jjoinlist
      generates a new revision which is the join of the revisions on
      joinlist. This option is largely obsoleted by rcsmerge(1) but is
      retained for backwards compatibility.
      The joinlist is a comma-separated list of pairs of the form rev2 :rev3,
      where rev2 and rev3 are (symbolic or numeric) revision numbers. For the
      initial such pair, rev1 denotes the revision selected by the above
      options -f, ..., -w. For all other pairs, rev1 denotes the revision
      generated by the previous pair. (Thus, the output of one join becomes
      the input to the next.)
      For each pair, co joins revisions rev1 and rev3 with respect to rev2.
      This means that all changes that transform rev2 into rev1 are applied
      to a copy of rev3. This is particularly useful if rev1 and rev3 are the
      ends of two branches that have rev2 as a common ancestor.	 If
      rev1<rev2<rev3 on the same branch, joining generates a new revision
      which is like rev3, but with all changes that lead from rev1 to rev2
      undone. If changes from rev2 to rev1 overlap with changes from rev2 to
      rev3, co reports overlaps as described in merge(1).
      For the initial pair, rev2 may be omitted.  The default is the common
      ancestor. If any of the arguments indicate branches, the latest
      revisions on those branches are assumed. The options -l and -u lock or
      unlock rev1.
  -Vn Emulate RCS version n, where n may be 3, 4, or 5. This may be useful
      when interchanging RCS files with others who are running older versions
      of RCS. To see which version of RCS your correspondents are running,
      have them invoke rlog on an RCS file; if none of the first few lines of
      output contain the string branch: it is version 3; if the dates' years
      have just two digits, it is version 4; otherwise, it is version 5. An
      RCS file generated while emulating version 3 will lose its default
      branch. An RCS revision generated while emulating version 4 or earlier
      will have a timestamp that is off by up to 13 hours.  A revision
      extracted while emulating version 4 or earlier will contain dates of
      the form yy/mm/dd instead of yyyy/mm/dd and may also contain different
      white space in the substitution for $Log$.
  -xsuffixes
      Use suffixes to characterize RCS files. See ci(1) for details.
DESCRIPTION
  co retrieves a revision from each RCS file and stores it into the
  corresponding working file.
  Pathnames matching an RCS suffix denote RCS files; all others denote
  working files. Names are paired as explained in ci(1).
  Revisions of an RCS file may be checked out locked or unlocked.  Locking a
  revision prevents overlapping updates.  A revision checked out for reading
  or processing (e.g., compiling) need not be locked.  A revision checked out
  for editing and later checkin must normally be locked.  Checkout with
  locking fails if the revision to be checked out is currently locked by
  another user.	 (A lock may be broken with rcs(1).) Checkout with locking
  also requires the caller to be on the access list of the RCS file, unless
  he is the owner of the file or the superuser, or the access list is empty.
  Checkout without locking is not subject to accesslist restrictions, and is
  not affected by the presence of locks.
  A revision is selected by options for revision or branch number, checkin
  date/time, author, or state. When the selection options are applied in
  combination, co retrieves the latest revision that satisfies all of them.
  If none of the selection options is specified, co retrieves the latest
  revision on the default branch (normally the trunk, see the -b option of
  rcs(1)). A revision or branch number may be attached to any of the options
  -f, -I, -l, -M, -p, -q, -r, or -u. The options -d (date), -s (state), and
  -w (author) retrieve from a single branch, the selected branch, which is
  either specified by one of -f, ..., -u, or the default branch.
  A co command applied to an RCS file with no revisions creates a zero-length
  working file.	 co always performs keyword substitution (see below).
KEYWORD SUBSTITUTION
  Strings of the form $keyword$ and $keyword:...$ embedded in the text are
  replaced with strings of the form $keyword:value$ where keyword and value
  are pairs listed below. Keywords may be embedded in literal strings or
  comments to identify a revision.
  Initially, the user enters strings of the form $keyword$. On checkout, co
  replaces these strings with strings of the form $keyword:value$. If a
  revision containing strings of the latter form is checked back in, the
  value fields will be replaced during the next checkout. Thus, the keyword
  values are automatically updated on checkout. This automatic substitution
  can be modified by the -k options.
  Keywords and their corresponding values:
  $Author$
      The login name of the user who checked in the revision.
  $Date$
      The date and time (UTC) the revision was checked in.
  $Header$
      A standard header containing the full pathname of the RCS file, the
      revision number, the date (UTC), the author, the state, and the locker
      (if locked).
  $Id$
      Same as $Header$, except that the RCS filename is without a path.
  $Locker$
      The login name of the user who locked the revision (empty if not
      locked).
  $Log$
      The log message supplied during checkin, preceded by a header
      containing the RCS filename, the revision number, the author, and the
      date (UTC). Existing log messages are not replaced. Instead, the new
      log message is inserted after $Log:...$. This is useful for
      accumulating a complete change log in a source file.
  $RCSfile$
      The name of the RCS file without a path.
  $Revision$
      The revision number assigned to the revision.
  $Source$
      The full pathname of the RCS file.
  $State$
      The state assigned to the revision with the -s option of rcs(1) or
      ci(1).
FILE MODES
  The working file inherits the read and execute permissions from the RCS
  file.	 In addition, the owner write permission is turned on, unless -kv is
  set or the file is checked out unlocked and locking is set to strict (see
  rcs(1)).
  If a file with the name of the working file exists already and has write
  permission, co aborts the checkout, asking beforehand if possible. If the
  existing working file is not writable or -f is given, the working file is
  deleted without asking.
RESTRICTIONS
  Links to the RCS and working files are not preserved.
  There is no way to selectively suppress the expansion of keywords, except
  by writing them differently.	In nroff and troff, this is done by embedding
  the null-character \!> into the keyword.
  The -d option sometimes gets confused, and accepts no date before 1970.
FILES
  co accesses files much as ci(1) does, except that it does not need to read
  the working file.
ENVIRONMENT
  RCSINIT
      options prepended to the argument list, separated by spaces.  See ci(1)
      for details.
DIAGNOSTICS
  The RCS pathname, the working pathname, and the revision number retrieved
  are written to the diagnostic output. The exit status is zero if and only
  if all operations were successful.
IDENTIFICATION
  Author: Walter F. Tichy.
  Revision Number: 1.1.6.2; Release Date: 1993/10/07.
  Copyright (C) 1982, 1988, 1989 by Walter F. Tichy.
  Copyright (C) 1990, 1991 by Paul Eggert.
SEE ALSO
  ci(1), ctime(3), date(1), ident(1), make(1), rcs(1), rcsdiff(1),
  rcsintro(1), rcsmerge(1), rlog(1), rcsfile(5)
  Walter F. Tichy, RCS--A System for Version Control, Software--Practice &
  Experience 15, 7 (July 1985), 637-654.
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		|  | Alphabetical listing for C
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