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7.5 Dico invocation

This section contains a short summary of dico command line options.

Command Line

The following table summarizes the four existing ways of dico invocation:

dico [options] word

Connect to the dictionary and define or match a word.

See Dico Command Line Options.

dico [options] url

Connect to the dictionary and define or match a word, supplied in the url.

See DICT URL.

dico [options] opmode

Connect to the dictionary and query the information required by opmode option, which is one of --dbs, --strategies, --serverhelp, --info, or --serverinfo. See below (see Operation modes) for a description.

dico [options]

Start interactive shell. See Interactive Mode.

Server selection options:

--host=server

Connect to this server.

See –host.

--port=port

-p port

Specify the port to connect to. The argument port can be either a port number or its symbolic service name, as listed in /etc/services.

--database=name

-d name

Select a database to search. The name can be either a name of one of the databases offered by the server (as returned by --dbs option), or one of the predefined database names: ‘!’ or ‘*’.

See –database.

--source=addr

Set source address for TCP connections.

Operation modifiers

--match

-m

Match instead of define.

See –match.

--strategy=name

-s name

Select a strategy for matching. The argument is either a name of one of the matching strategies supported by server (as displayed by --strategies option) or a dot (‘.’) meaning a server-dependent default strategy.

This option implies --match.

See –strategy.

--levdist=n

--levenshtein-distance=n

Sets maximum Levenshtein distance. Allowed values of n are between 1 and 9 inclusively. This option has effect only if the remote server supports ‘xlev’ extension (see XLEV).

See –levdist.

--quiet

-q

Do not print the normal dico welcome banner when entering interactive shell.

See quiet.

Operation modes

--dbs

-D

Show available databases.

See –dbs.

--strategies

-S

Show available search strategies.

See –strategies.

--serverhelp

-H

Show server help.

--info=dbname

-i dbname

Show information about database dbname.

--serverinfo

-I

Show information about the server.

Authentication

--noauth

-a

Disable authentication.

See Autologin.

--sasl

Enable SASL authentication, if the server supports it. See Autologin.

--nosasl

Disable SASL authentication. See Autologin.

--user=name

-u name

Set user name for authentication.

See Autologin.

--key=string

-k string

--password=string

Set shared secret for authentication.

See Autologin.

--autologin=name

Set the name of autologin file to use.

See Autologin.

--client=string

-c string

Additional text for client command, instead of the default ‘GNU dico 2.11.90’.

Debugging options

--transcript

-t

Enable session transcript. See Session Transcript, for a description.

--verbose

-v

Increase debugging verbosity level.

--time-stamp

Include time stamp in the debugging output.

--source-info

Include source line information in the debugging output.

Other options

--help

-h

Display a short description of command line options.

--usage

Display a short usage message

--version

Print program version.