4.1.1 Adding Records With recins

Each invocation of recins adds one record to the targeted database. The fields comprising the records are specified using pairs of -f and -v command line arguments. For example, this is how we would add the first entry to a previously empty contacts database:

     $ recins -f Name -v "Mr Foo" -f Email -v foo@bar.baz contacts.rec
     $ cat contacts.rec
     Name: Mr. Foo
     Email: foo@bar.baz

If we invoke recins again on the same database we will be adding a second record:

     $ recins -f Name -v "Mr Bar" -f Email -v bar@gnu.org contacts.rec
     $ cat contacts.rec
     Name: Mr. Foo
     Email: foo@bar.baz
     
     name: Mr. Bar
     Email: bar@gnu.org

There is no limit on the number of -f -v pairs that can be specified to recins, other than any limit on command line arguments which may be imposed by the shell.

The field values provided using -v are encoded to follow the rec format conventions, including multi-line field values. Consider the following example:

     $ recins -f Name -v "Mr. Foo" -f Address -v '
     Foostrs. 19
     Frankfurt am Oder
     Germany' contacts.rec
     $ cat contacts.rec
     Name: Mr. Foo
     Address:
     + Foostrs. 19
     + Frankfurt am Oder
     + Germany

It is also possible to provide fields already encoded as rec data for their addition, using the -r command line argument. This argument can be intermixed with -f -v.

     $ recins -f Name -v "Mr. Foo" -r "Email: foo@bar.baz" contacts.rec
     $ cat contacts.rec
     Name: Mr. Foo
     Email: foo@bar.baz

If the string passed to -r is not valid rec data then recins will complain with an error and the operation will be aborted.

At this time, it is not possible to add new records containing comments.