===============================================================================
		FSP client version 0.0-h (pre-alpha)
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    This software is copyright 1992, 1993 Philip G. Richards, All
    Rights Reserved.  Any copies that are made of this code MUST keep an
    unmodified copy of this notice within a file called README in the
    same directory as the source code.  This is a PRE-ALPHA release --
    I would prefer that the code does not get posted to Usenet, thank-you
    very much :-)

	    THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.

    The author will accept no responsibility for any use or misuse of the
    software, nor for any consequences produced by using it.  In other
    words, if it deletes all your files, don't blame me -- by using
    it, you are accepting responsibility and liability.  (It will not,
    however, intentionally delete them -- it will have been an error.)

    The author can be contacted (currently) as <pgr@prg.oxford.ac.uk>.

===============================================================================

  **************************************************************************
  ***   Note: I have written the *program* called `fsp' -- I have        ***
  ***   *not* written the entire FSP package.  Questions about           ***
  ***   the server and the like should be sent to Wen-King Su            ***
  ***   <wen-king@vlsi.cs.caltech.edu> -- or the new maintainer of the   ***
  ***   code Joseph_Traub@seismo.soar.cs.cmu.edu.                        ***
  **************************************************************************


---------------- What the client can do ---------------------------------------
There is a help command; not a very good one, but it does tell you the
commands.  Type `help' to get a list of all commands; to get a brief
description of a command, type `help name' (`name' being the command);
to get brief help on all commands type `help all' (warning: there are
46 commands).

See the manual page fsp(1) for a somewhat longer description...

Note for versions since 0.0-g: the command `cat', `get', `du', and
`tar' can all take a `-r' flag -- this causes the commands to process
subdirectories as well as files.  e.g., `du' will give the disk usage of
the current directory; `du -r' will give the disk usage of the current
directory and _all_ subdirectories (resursively).   The `timeout' command
causes communications to return an error code if the timeout occurs;
this means that:

	timeout 30
	pro
	iferror exit

is a good way of determining whether a remote site is alive or not when
writing scripts.  The `ver' should only return an error if the timeout
occurs -- however, pre-2.6.3 servers return version strings as an error
which messes up that usage...

Macro's are, for want of a better word, stupid.  Until parameter
variables are allowed, they can not do very much.  Common ones (and
user set up options) should be defined in the file ~/.fsprc (i.e., .fsprc
in your home directory).  This filename can be changed by setting the
environment variable FSPRC.  An example .fsprc is supplied in the file
`fsprc' in this directory.

It is also now possible to have commands like:
    ls -l | less
Anything after the first `|' symbol is fed the output of the builtin
command...

rehash may need a little explanation -- when you do an ls, the directory
information is fetched to the local end and stays there (thanks to
the original authors stuff); if you want to check if anything has been
updated since you did an ls of a directory, then you must rehash first.
The client is now a bit more intelligent than it used to be (i.e., pre
`d' release); it will automatically mark directories as out-of-date if
it knows that it has modified them (e.g., by put, or mkdir or whatever).
It's the wrong command name, but it brings back fond memories of csh...
It may sound like a disadvantage -- in fact it is an enormous benefit
having it work this way... *much* faster.

All the commands which have a f<name> equivalent in the original
distribution behave as before; well, pretty much.

Oh, one last thing -- command lines can't have continuations...\
yet :-)

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If you use it and like it, mail me.  I need the encouragement :-) If you
use it and don't like it, mail me.  I need bringing back down to earth...

Basically, even though it is pre-alpha, I would still like to know
whether people like it or not... just don't complain too loud when it
doesn't work right :-)

enjoy,
pihl <pgr@prg.oxford.ac.uk>
