.TH pathmerge "" "" "Command"
.PC "Merge sorted paths files"
\fB/usr/lib/mail/pathmerge \fIfile ...\fR
.PP
.B pathmerge
reads a set of sorted path
.IR file s,
as generated by
.BR pathalias ,
merges the path information, they contain, and writes the result onto
the standard output.
It normally is used only by administrators of busy systems, to maintain
the path information used by
.BR smail .
.PP
In its output,
.B pathalias
writes one path given for each host name.
It gives precedence in paths to the
.IR file s
that appear earlier in the argument list.
The file name `-' represents the standard input;
this lets
.B pathmerge
mingle input from files and the standard input.
.PP
As an example of the use of
.BR pathmerge ,
consider two files,
.B forces
and
.BR paths ,
whose contents, respectively, are
.DM
	ihnp4    cbosgd!ihnp4!%s
	muts12   muts12!%s
	sun      sun!%s
.DE
.PP
and:
.DM
	cbosgd   cbosgd!%s
	ihnp4    ihnp4!%s
	sun      ames!sun!%s
	uunet    uunet!%s
.DE
.PP
The command
.DM
	pathmerge forces paths
.DE
.PP
writes onto the standard output:
.DM
	cbosgd   cbosgd!%s
	ihnp4    cbosgd!ihnp4!%s
	muts12   muts12!%s
	sun      sun!%s
	uunet    uunet!%s
.DE
.PP
For the purposes of
.BR pathmerge ,
a host name is terminated a by a space, a tab, a colon, or a newline.
The number of
.IR file s
that you can pass to
.B pathmerge
is limited by the number of available file descriptors,
as all of the files are opened and read simultaneously.
.SH "See Also"
.B
commands,
mail (overview),
mkline,
mkpath,
mksort,
mkdbm,
pathalias,
smail
.R
.SH Notes
Copyright \(co 1987, 1988 Ronald S. Karr and Landon Curt Noll.
Copyright \(co 1992 Ronald S. Karr.
.PP
For details on the distribution rights and restrictions
associated with this software, see file
.BR COPYING ,
which is included with the source code to the
.B smail
system; or type the command:
.BR "smail \-bc" .
