.TH seek "" "" "/rdb Command"
.PC "Return the beginning and ending offset of a row"
\fBseek [-m[bihrs]] [-o \fIoutfile\fB] \fItableorlist \fB[\fIkeycol...\fB] < \fIfile\fR
.PP
.II "row^find"
.II "row^offset"
.II "find row"
The command
.B seek
returns the offsets of the beginning and end of a record in
.IR tableorlist .
It uses the command
.B search
with its location option
.BR \-l .
.PP
The offset and size integers returned can be used by the
.B replace
to write a new record.
They are also used by the commands
.B lock
and
.B unlock
to set and remove record locks.
.SH Options
.B seek
recognizes the following options:
.IP \fB-m[bhirs]\fR
Fast access methods.
See the manual entry for the command
.B search
for a full description of various search options and how you can invoke each.
.IP \fB-o\fR
Write the found record into
.BR outfile .
.SH Example
Let's use
.B seek
on the table
.BR inventory ,
which is as follows:
.DM
Item    Amount  Cost    Value   Description   
----    ------  ----    -----   --------------
   1         3    50      150   rubber gloves
   2       100     5      500   test tubes
   3         5    80      400   clamps
   4        23    19      437   plates
   5        99    24     2376   cleaning cloth
   6        89   147    13083   bunsen burners
   7         5   175      875   scales
.DE
.PP
The following command invokes
.B seek
to find row 5:
.DM
	echo 5 | seek -mb inventory Item
.DE
.PP
This writes the following to the standard output:
.DM
	207     245     0       8
.DE
.PP
This means that the record is 207 bytes into the file and that
it is 38 bytes long, ending at byte 245.
.PP
The next example
extracts a row from
.BR inventory
blanks it out, then writes the row back into
.B inventory
on top of the original row.
First, extract the row:
.DM
	LOCATION=`echo 5 | seek -mb -o tmp inventory Item`
.DE
.PP
The location of the selected record is stored in environmental variable
.BR LOCATION .
The option
.B "\-o tmp"
writes the record with key equal to 5 into table
.BR tmp ,
which appears as follows:
.DM
Item    Amount  Cost    Value   Description   
----    ------  ----    -----   --------------
   5        99    24     2376   cleaning cloth
.DE
.PP
The next command blanks the contents of
.BR tmp ,
then writes the blanked row back into
.B inventory
at the location stored earlier at
.BR LOCATION :
.DM
	blank < tmp | replace inventory $LOCATION
.DE
.PP
.B inventory
now appears as follows:
.DM
Item    Amount  Cost    Value   Description   
----    ------  ----    -----   --------------
   1         3    50      150   rubber gloves
   2       100     5      500   test tubes
   3         5    80      400   clamps
   4        23    19      437   plates
.sp \n(pDu
   6        89   147    13083   bunsen burners
   7         5   175      875   scales
.DE
.SH "See Also"
.B
index,
lock,
replace,
search,
unlock
.R
.SO seek