=head1 NAME SWISH-RUN - Running Swish-e and Command Line Switches =head1 OVERVIEW The Swish-e program is controlled by command line arguments (called I). Often, it is run manually from a shell (command prompt), or from a program such as a CGI script that passes the command line arguments to swish. Note: A number of the command line switches may be specified in the Swish-e configuration file specified with the C<-c> command line argument. Please see L for a complete description of available configuration file directives. There are two basic operating modes of Swish-e: indexing and searching. There are command line arguments that are unique to each mode, and others that apply to both (yet may have different meaning depending on the operating mode). These command line arguments are listed below, grouped by: L -- describes the command line arguments used while indexing. L -- lists the command line arguments used while searching. L -- lists switches that don't apply to searching or indexing. Beginning with Swish-e version 2.1, you may embed its search engine into your applications. Please see L. =head1 INDEXING Swish-e indexing is initiated by passing I to swish. The command line arguments used for I are described in L. Also, see L for examples of searching with Swish-e. Swish-e usage: swish-e [-i dir file ... ] [-c file] [-f file] [-l] \ [-v (num)] [-S method(fs|http|prog)] [-N path] The C<-h> switch (help) will list the available Swish-e command line arguments: swish-e -h Typically, most if not all indexing settings are placed in a configuration file (specified with the C<-c> switch). Once the configuration file is setup indexing is initiated as: swish-e -c /path/to/config/file See L for information on the configuration file. Security Note: If the swish binary is named F then swish will not allow any operation that would cause swish to write to the index file. When indexing it may be advisable to index to a temporary file, and then after indexing has successfully completed rename the file to the final location. This is especially important when replacing an index that is currently in use. swish-e -c swish.config -f index.tmp [check return code from swish or look for err: output] mv index.tmp index.swish-e =head2 Indexing Command Line Arguments =over 4 =item -i *directories and/or files* (input file) This specifies the directories and/or files to index. Directories will be indexed recursively. This is typically specified in the L with the B directive instead of on the command line. Use of this switch overrides the configuration file settings. =item -S [fs|http|prog] (document source/access mode) This specifies the method to use for accessing documents to index. Can be either C for local indexing via the file system (the default), C for spidering, or C for reading documents from an external program. Located in the C directory are example configuration files that demonstrate indexing with the different document source methods. See the L for a discussion on the different indexing methods, and the difference between spidering with the http method vs. using the file system method. =over 4 =item fs - file system The C method simply reads files from a local (or networked) drive. This is the default method if the C<-S> switch is not specified. See L for configuration directives specific to the C method. =item http - spider a web server The C method is used to spider web servers. It uses an included helper program called F located in the F directory. Swish needs to be able to locate this program when using the C method. See L for configuration directives specific to the C method. By default, swish looks in the current directory for the F program, or in the directory specified by the C directive. The first line of the F program (the "shebang" line) must point to the location of the Perl program (if your operating system uses it). Security Note: Under Windows swish passes the URLs fetched from remote documents through the shell (swish uses the system() command for running F under Windows), and this may be considered an additional security risk. The C method is depreciated (or at least not very well appreciated). Consider using the C method described below for spidering. There's a spider program available in the F directory for use with the C method. =item prog - general purpose access method The C method is new to Swish-e version 2.2. It's designed as a general purpose method to feed documents to swish from an external program. For example, the external program can read a database (e.g. MySQL), spider a web server, or convert documents from one format to another (e.g. pdf to html). Or, you can simply use it to read the files of the file system (like C<-S fs>), yet provide you with full control of what files are indexed. The external program name to run is passed to swish either by the L directive, or via the C<-i> option. Additional parameters may be passed to the external program via the L directive. A special name "stdin" may be used with C<-i> or L which tells swish to read from standard input instead of from an external program. See example below. The external program prints to standard output (which swish captures) a set of headers followed by the content of the file to index. The output looks similar to an email message or a HTTP document returned by a web server in that it includes name/value pairs of headers, a blank line, and the content. The content length is determined by a content-length header supplied to swish by the program; there is no "end of record" character or flag sent between documents. Therefore, it is critical that the content-length header is correct. This is a common source of errors. One advantage of this method (over using filters, for example) is that the external program is run only once for the entire indexing job, instead of once for every document. This avoids forking and creating a new process for every document, and makes a huge difference when your external program is something like perl that has a large startup cost. Here's a simple example written in Perl: #!/usr/local/bin/perl -w use strict; # Build a document my $doc = < Document Title This is the text. EOF # Prepare the headers for swish my $path = 'Example.file'; my $size = length $doc; my $mtime = time; # Output the document (to swish) print < and C headers. The optional C parameter is the last modification time of the file, and must be a time stamp (seconds since the Epoch on your platform). You may override swish's determination of document type (C) by using the C header. The above program only returns one document and exits, which is not very useful. Normally, your program would read data from some source, such as files or a database, format as XML, HTML, or text, and pass them to swish, one after another. The C header tells swish where each document ends -- there is not any special "end of record" character or marker. To index with the above example you need to make sure that the program is executable (and that the path to perl is correct), and then call swish telling to run in C mode, and the name of the program to use for input. % chmod 755 example.pl % ./swish-e -S prog -i ./example.pl Programs can and should be tested prior to running swish. For example: % ./example.pl > test.out A few more useful example programs are provided in the swish-e distribution located in the F directory. Some include documentation: % cd prog-bin % perldoc spider.pl Others are small examples that include comments: % cd prog-bin % less DirTree.pl The F program can be used as a replacement for the F<-S http> method. If you use the special program name "stdin" with C<-i> or L then swish-e will read from standard input instead of from a program. For example: % ./example.pl /path/to/data --count=1000 | ./swish-e -S prog -i stdin This is basically the same as using a swish-e configuration file of: SwishProgParameters /path/to/data --count=1000 IndexDir ./example.pl in a config file and running % ./swish-e -S prog -c swish.conf This gives an easy way to run swish without a configuration file with a C<-S prog> program that requires parameters. Using "stdin" might also be useful for programs that call swish (instead of swish calling the program). (The reason "stdin" is used instead of the more common "-" dash is due to the rotten way swish parses the command line. This should be fixed in the future.) The C method bypasses some of the configuration parameters available to the file system method -- settings such as C, C, C and C are ignored when using the C method. It's expected that these operations are better accomplished in the external program before passing the document onto swish. In other words, when using the C method, only send the documents to swish that you want indexed. You may use swish's filter feature with the C method, but performance will be better if you run filtering programs from within your external program. B Windows does not use the shebang (#!) line of a program to determine the program to run. So, when running, for example, a perl program you will need to specify the perl.exe binary as the program, and use the C to name the file. IndexDir e:/perl/bin/perl.exe SwishProgParameters read_database.pl Swish will replace the forward slashes with backslashes before running the command specified with C. Swish uses the popen(3) command which passes the command through the shell. =back =item -f *indexfile* (index file) If you are indexing, this specifies the file to save the generated index in, and you can only specify one file. See also B in the L. If you are searching, this specifies the index files (one or more) to search from. The default index file is index.swish-e in the current directory. =item -c *file ...* (configuration files) Specify the configuration file(s) to use for indexing. This file contains many directives that control how Swish-e proceeds. See L for a complete listing of configuration file directives. Example: swish-e -c docs.conf If you specify a directory to index, an index file, or the verbose option on the command-line, these values will override any specified in the configuration file. You can specify multiple configuration files. For example, you may have one configuration file that has common site-wide settings, and another for a specific index. Examples: 1) swish-e -c swish-e.conf 2) swish-e -i /usr/local/www -f index.swish-e -v -c swish-e.conf 3) swish-e -c swish-e.conf stopwords.conf =over 3 =item 1 The settings in the configuration file will be used to index a site. =item 2 These command-line options will override anything in the configuration file. =item 3 The variables in swish-e.conf will be read, then the variable in stopwords.conf will be read. Note that if the same variables occur in both files, older values may be written over. =back =item -e (economy mode) For large sites indexing may require more RAM than is available. The C<-e> switch tells swish to use disk space to store data structures while indexing, saving memory. This option is recommended if swish uses so much RAM that the computer begins to swap excessively, and you cannot increase available memory. The trade-off is longer indexing times, and a busy disk drive. =item -l (symbolic links) Specifying this option tells swish to follow symbolic links when indexing. The configuration file value B will override the command-line value. The default is not to follow symlinks. A small improvement in indexing time my result from enabling FollowSymLinks since swish does not need to stat every directory and file processed to determine if it is a symbolic link. =item -N path (index only newer files) The C<-N> option takes a path to a file, and only files I than the specified file will be indexed. This is helpful for creating incremental indexes -- that is, indexes that contain just files added since the last full index was created of all files. Example (bad example) swish-e -c config.file -N index.swish-e -f index.new This will index as normal, but only files with a modified date newer than F will be indexed. This is a bad example because it uses F which one might assume was the date of last indexing. The problem is that files might have been added between the time indexing read the directory and when the F file was created -- which can be quite a bit of time for very large indexing jobs. The only solution is to prevent any new file additions while full indexing is running. If this is impossible then it will be slightly better to do this: Full indexing: touch indexing_time.file swish-e -c config.file -f index.tmp mv index.tmp index.full Incremental indexing: swish-e -c config.file -N indexing_time.file -f index.tmp mv index.tmp index.incremental Then search with swish-e -w foo -f index.full index.incremental or merge the indexes swish-e -M index.full index.incremental index.tmp mv index.tmp index.swish-e swish-e -w foo =item -v [0|1|2|3] (verbosity level) The C<-v> option can take a numerical value from 0 to 3. Specify 0 for completely silent operation and 3 for detailed reports. If no value is given then 1 is assumed. See also B in the L. Warnings and errors are reported regardless of the verbosity level. In addition, all error and warnings are written to standard out. This is for historical reasons (many scripts exist that parse standard out for error messages). =back =head1 SEARCHING The following command line arguments are available when searching with Swish-e. These switches are used to select the index to search, what fields to search, and how and what to print as results. This section just lists the available command line arguments and their usage. Please see L for detailed searching instructions. B: If using Swish-e via a CGI interface, please see L Security Note: If the swish binary is named F then swish will not allow any operation that would cause swish to write to the index file. =head2 Searching Command Line Arguments =over 4 =item -w *word1 word2 ...* (query words) This performs a case-insensitive search using a number of keywords. If no index file to search is specified (via the C<-f> switch), swish-e will try to search a file called index.swish-e in the current directory. swish-e -w word Phrase searching is accomplished by placing the quote delimiter (a double-quote by default) around the search phrase. swish-e -w 'word or "this phrase"' Search would should be protected from the shell by quotes. Typically, this is single quotes when running under Unix. Under Windows F you may not need to use quotes, but you will need to backslash the quotes used to delimit phrases: swish-e -w \"a phrase\" The phrase delimiter can be set with the C<-P> switch. The search may be limited to a I. For example: swish-e -w meta1=(foo or baz) will only search within the B tag. Please see L for a description of MetaNames. =item -f *file1 file2 ...* (index files) Specifies the index file(s) used while searching. More than one file may be listed, and each file will be searched. If no C<-f> switch is specified then the file F in the current directory will be used as the index file. =item -m *number* (max results) While searching, this specifies the maximum number of results to return. The default is to return all results. This switch is often used in conjunction with the C<-b> switch to return results one page at a time (strongly recommended for large indexes). =item -b *number* (beginning result) Sets the I search result to return (records are numbered from 1). This switch can be used with the C<-m> switch to return results in groups or pages. Example: swish-e -w 'word' -b 1 -m 20 # first 'page' swish-e -w 'word' -b 21 -m 20 # second 'page' =item -t HBthec (context searching) The C<-t> option allows you to search for words that exist only in specific HTML tags. Each character in the string you specify in the argument to this option represents a different tag in which to search for the word. H means all HEAD tags, B stands for BODY tags, t is all TITLE tags, h is H1 to H6 (header) tags, e is emphasized tags (this may be B, I, EM, or STRONG), and c is HTML comment tags search only in header () tags swish-c -w word -t h =item -d *string* (delimiter) Set the delimiter used when printing results. By default, Swish-e separates the output fields by a space, and places double-quotes around the document title. This output may be hard to parse, so it is recommended to use C<-d> to specify a character or string used as a separator between fields. The string C means "double-quotes". swish-e -w word -d , # single char swish-e -w word -d :: # string swish-e -w word -d '"' # double quotes under Unix swish-e -w word -d \" # double quotes under Windows swish-e -w word -d dq # double quotes The following control characters may also be specified: C<\t \r \n \f>. =item -P *character* Sets the delimiter used for phrase searches. The default is double quotes C<">. Some examples under bash: (be careful about you shell metacharacters) swish-e -P ^ -w 'title=^words in a phrase^' swish-e -P \' -w "title='words in a pharse"' =item -p *property1 property2 ...* (display properties) This causes swish to print the listed property in the search results. The properties are returned in the order they are listed in the C<-p> argument. Properties are defined by the B directive in the configuration file (see L) and properties must also be defined in B. Swish stores the text of the meta name as a I, and then will return this text while searching if this option is used. Properties are very useful for returning data included in a source documnet without having to re-read the source document while searching. For example, this could be used to return a short document description. See also see B and L in L. To return the subject and category properties while indexing. swish-e -w word -p subject category Properties are returned in double quotes. If a property contains a double quote it is HTML escaped ("). See the C<-x> switch for a more advanced method of returning a list of properties. NOTE: it is necessary to have indexed with the proper PropertyNames directive in the user config file in order to use this option. =item -s *property [asc|desc] ...* (sort) Normally, search results are printed out in order of relevancy, with the most relevant listed first. The C<-s> sort switch allows you to sort results in order of a specified I, where a I was defined using the B and B directives during indexing (see L). The string passed can include the strings C and C to specify the sort order, and more than one property may be specified to sort on more than one key. Examples: sort by title property ascending order -s title sort descending by title, ascending by name -s title desc name asc =item -L limit to a range of property values (Limit) B The C<-L> switch can be used to limit search results to a range of property values Example: swish-e -w foo -L swishtitle a m finds all documents that contain the word C, and where the document's title is in the range of C to C, inclusive. By default, the case of the property is ignored, but this can be changed by using L configuation directive. Limiting may be done with user-defined properties, as well. For example, if you indexed documents that contain a created timestamp in a meta tag: Then you tell Swish that you have a property called C, and that it's a timestamp. PropertyNamesDate created_on After indexing you will be able to limit documents to a range of timestamps: -w foo -L created_on 946684800 949363199 will find documents containing the word foo and that have a created_on date from the start of Jan 1, 2000 to the end of Jan 31, 2000. Note: swish currently does not parse dates; Unix timestamps must be used. Two special formats can be used: -L swishtitle <= m -L swishtitle >= m Finds titles less than or equal, or grater than or equal to the letter C. This feature will not work with C or C properties. This feature takes advantages of the pre-sorted tables built by swish during indexing to make this feature fast while searching. You should see in the indexing output a line such as: 6 properties sorted. That indicates that six pre-sorted tables were built during indexing. By default, all properties are presorted while indexing. What properties are pre-sorted can be controlled by the configuration parameter C. Using the C<-L> switch on a property that was not pre-sorted will still work, but may be I slower during searching. This is an experimental feature, and its use and interface are subject to change. =item -x formatstring (extended output format) The C<-x> switch defines the output format string. The format string can contain plain text and property names (including swish-defined internal property names) and is used to generate the output for every result. In addition, the output format of the property name can be controlled with C-like printf format strings. This feature overrides the cmdline switches C<-d> and C<-p>, and a warning will be generated if C<-d> or C<-p> are used with C<-x>. For example, to return just the title, one per line, in the search results: swish-e -w ... -x '\n' ... Note: the C<\n> may need to be protected from your shell. See also L for a way to define I format strings in the swish configuration file. B "texttexttext..." Where B is: =over 4 =item * the name of a user property as specified with the config file directive "PropertyNames" =item * the name of a swish Auto property (see below). These properties are defined automatically by swish -- you do not need to specify them with PropertyNames directive. (This may change in the future.) =back propertynames must be placed within "E" and "E". B Swish-e allows you to specify certain META tags within your documents that can be used as B. The contents of any META tag that has been identified as a document property can be returned as part of the search results. Doucment properties must be defined while indexing using the B configuration directive (see L). Examples of user-defined PropertyNames: B Swish defines a number of "Auto" properties for each document indexed. These are available for output when using the C<-x> format. Name Type Contents -------------- ------- ---------------------------------------------- swishreccount Integer Result record counter swishtitle String Document title swishrank Integer Result rank for this hit swishdocpath String URL or filepath to document swishdocsize Integer Document size in bytes swishlastmodified Date Last modified date of document swishdescription String Description of document (see:StoreDescription) swishdbfile String Path of swish database indexfile The Auto properties can also be specified using shortcuts: Shortcut Property Name -------- -------------- %c swishreccount %d swishdescription %D swishlastmodified %I swishdbfile %p swishdocpath %r swishrank %l swishdocsize %t swishtitle For example, these are equivalent: -x '::\n' -x '%r:%p:%t\n' Use a double percent sign "%%" to enter a literal percent sign in the output. B Properties listed in an C<-x> format string can include format control strings. These "propertyformats" are used to control how the contents of the associated property are printed. Property formats are used like C-language printf formats. The property format is specified by including the attribute "fmt" within the property tag. Format strings cannot be used with the "%" shortcuts described above. General syntax: -x '' where C controls the output format of C. Examples of property format strings: date type: string type: integer type: Please see the manual pages for strftime(3) and sprintf(3) for an explanation of format strings. Note: some versions of strftime do not offer the %s format string (number of seconds since the Epoch), so swish provides a special format string "%ld" to display the number of seconds since the Epoch. The first character of a property format string defines the delimiter for the format string. For example, -x " ...\n" -x " ...\n" -x " ...\n" B If you ommit the sub-format, the following formats are used: String type: "%s" (like printf char *) Integer type: "%d" (like printf int) Float type: "%f" (like printf double) Date type: "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" (like strftime) B Text will be output as-is in format strings (and property format strings). Special characters can be escaped with a backslash. To get a new line for each result hit, you have to include the Newline-Character "\n" at the end of "fmtstr". -x "||\n" -x "Count=, Rank=\n" -x "Title=\\" -x 'Date: \n' -x 'Date in seconds: \n' B you can use C-like control escapes in the format string: known controls: \a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t, \v, digit escapes: \xhexdigits \0octaldigits character escapes: \anychar Example, swish -x "%c\t%r\t%p\t\"\"\n" B -x "%c|%r|%p|%t|%D|%d\n" -x "%c|%r|%p|%t||%d\n" -x "\t\t\t\n -x "xml_out: \\>\\n" -x "xml_out: \n" =item -H [0|1|2|3|] (header output verbosity) The C<-H n> switch generates extened I
output. This is most useful when searching more than one index file at a time, either by specifying more than one index file with the C<-f> switch, or when searching a merged index file. In these cases, C<-H 2> will generate a set of headers specific to each index file. This gives access to the settings used to generate each index file. Even when searching a single index file, C<-H n> will provided additional information about the index file, how it was indexed, and how swish is interperting the query. -H 0 : print no header information, output only search result entries. -H 1 : print standard result header (default). -H 2 : print additional header information for each searched index file. -H 3 : enhanced header output (e.g. print stopwords). -H 9 : print diagnostic information in the header of the results (changed from: C<-v 4>) =back =head1 OTHER SWITCHES =over 4 =item -V (version) Print the current version. =item -k *letter* (print out keywords) The C<-k> switch is used for testing and will cause swish to print out all keywords in the index beginning with that letter. You may enter C<-k '*'> to generate a list of all words indexed by swish. =item -D *index file* (debug index) The -D option is no longer supported in version 2.2. =item -T *options* (trace/debug swish) The -T option is used to print out information that may be helpful when debugging swish-e's operation. This option replaced the C<-D> option of previous versions. Running C<-T help> will print out a list of available *options* =back =head1 Merging Index Files At times it can be useful to merge different index files into one file for searching. This could be because you want to keep separate site indexes and a common one for a global search, or because your site is very large and Swish-e runs out of memory if you try to index it directly. You can only merge only indexes that were indexed with common settings (e.g. don't mix stemming and non-stemming indexes, or indexes with different WordCharacter settings, etc.). usage: swish-e [-v (num)] [-c file] -M index1 index2 ... outputfile Due to the structure of the swish-e index, merging may or may not require less memory than indexing all files at one time. =over 4 =item -M *file file ...* (merge) This allows you to merge two or more index files - the last file you specify on the list will be the output file. Merging removes all redundant file and word data. To estimate how much memory the operation will need, sum up the sizes of the files to be merged and divide by two. That's about the maximum amount of memory that will be used. You can use the C<-v> option to produce feedback while merging and the C<-c> option with a configuration file to include new administrative information in the new index file. =item -c *configuration file* Specify a configuration file while indexing to add administrative information to the output index file. =back =head1 Document Info $Id: SWISH-RUN.pod,v 1.1.1.1 2002/09/20 19:47:29 adcroft Exp $ .