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Using keywords

To include a keyword string you simply include the relevant text string, such as $Id$, inside the file, and commit the file. CVS will automatically expand the string as part of the commit operation.

It is common to embed $Id$ string in the C source code. This example shows the first few lines of a typical file, after keyword substitution has been performed:

static char *rcsid="$Id: samp.c,v 1.5 1993/10/19 14:57:32 ceder Exp $";
/* The following lines will prevent gcc version 2.x
   from issuing an "unused variable" warning. */
#if __GNUC__ == 2
#define USE(var) static void * use_##var = (&use_##var, (void *) &var) 
USE (rcsid);
#endif

Even though a clever optimizing compiler could remove the unused variable rcsid, most compilers tend to include the string in the binary. Some compilers have a #pragma directive to include literal text in the binary.

The ident command (which is part of the RCS package) can be used to extract keywords and their values from a file. This can be handy for text files, but it is even more useful for extracting keywords from binary files.

$ ident samp.c
samp.c:
     $Id: samp.c,v 1.5 1993/10/19 14:57:32 ceder Exp $
$ gcc samp.c
$ ident a.out
a.out:
     $Id: samp.c,v 1.5 1993/10/19 14:57:32 ceder Exp $

SCCS is another popular revision control system. It has a command, what, which is very similar to ident and used for the same purpose. Many sites without RCS have SCCS. Since what looks for the character sequence @(#) it is easy to include keywords that are detected by either command. Simply prefix the RCS keyword with the magic SCCS phrase, like this:

static char *id="@(#) $Id: ab.c,v 1.5 1993/10/19 14:57:32 ceder Exp $";


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