Unix MFS and Serial File

Question

1. How do you differentiate a serial and mfs file. For e.g a user can create his own directory and put the file over there , so how do you differentiate the file before you use a command.

2. Can anyone tell me what does 'i' and 'e' means in grep -i or grep -e

3. How do you create a serial or a MFS file and how can we convert one file into another

Answer 1

It's not really an MFS file; it's an MFS directory. In order to use it, you have to first create one:

The build-mfs utility builds a multifile system for use by an Ab Initio Environment. It creates the control files and the data partition areas in separate locations that you specify

You cannot "convert" from serial to MFS or backwards. You would have to have a graph read an MFS stored dataset and gather/merge into a serial layout.

As for grep, do man grep (or grep --help):

-e PATTERN, --regexp=PATTERN
              Use  PATTERN as the pattern.  This can be used to specify multiple search patterns, or to protect a pattern beginning with a hyphen (-).  (-e is
              specified by POSIX.)
-i, --ignore-case
              Ignore case distinctions in both the PATTERN and the input files.  (-i is specified by POSIX.)