command line

 

On the command line, you always have a long option and sometimes a shortcut. The long option begins with --, while the short one simply begins with a -. Example:

# storeBackup.pl --file backup.config
# storeBackup.pl -f backup.conf

is equivalent. This also shows an option, which can have exactly one parameter (the file name).

There are others option which can have more than one parameter:

# storeBackup.pl .... -e /proc -e /tmp -e /var/tmp

In this example, option -e (same as --exceptDirs) is used to define multiple directories not to backup. You can simply repeat the option. It does not matter if you use the long or the short form or a mixture of them.

Now let's look at an option to define the program to uncompress the files in the backup. Let's choose gzip -d, a program with a parameter:

# storeBackup.pl .... --uncompress "gzip -d"

As documented in the description of storeBackup.pl, the parameter of this option is parsed as if it were written in the configuration file (the quoting is stripped by the shell):

uncompress = gzip -d

In this way, storeBackup.pl will see two parameters (gzip and -d) of option --uncompress.

Sometimes, you can also use list parameters (parameters without an option). Eg. in storeBackup.pl they are called otherBackupDirs.