.\"Copyright (C) 2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
.\"Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
.\"are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
.\"notice and this notice are preserved.
.Dd September 23, 2020
.Dt plutil 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm plutil
.Nd Property list utility
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm progname
.Op Fl command
.Op Fl options
.Ar file
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility can be used to edit property lists, to verify the syntax, or
to convert from one format to another. If
.Ql -
is given as the file path, stdin and stdout are used.
.Pp
The first part is the action to perform, one of:
.Bl -tag
.It -p
Print the whole plist to stdout, in the human-readable GNUStep format.
.It -lint
Verifies the plist can be parsed.
.It -convert Ar FMT
Converts the plist to another format.
.Ql FMT
can be one of:
.Bl -tag
.It xml1
Apple XML.
.It binary1
Apple binary.
.It openstep
OpenStep (untyped human-readable).
.It gnustep
GNUStep (typed human-readable).
.It json
JSON (lossy human-readable).
.El
The NSPropertyListFormat names are accepted too.
.It -insert Ar PATH Ar KEY Ar Value
.El
The default action is
.Ql -lint.
.Pp
The general options are:
.Bl -tag
.El
.Pp
The plutil "keypath" is a dot-separated chain of keys for traversing
a plist object. An empty keypath refers to the object itself. The
format of keys conform to that of GNUStep plist string literals.
.Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
.Bl -tag
.It 1
Quoted strings in the keypath is a GNUStep extension.
.It 2
The Objective-C and Swift literal output formats are not yet implemented.
.El
.Sh EXIT STATUS
.Pp 0 on success.
.Sh EXAMPLES
.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr pl 1
.Xr pldes 1
.Sh AUTHORS
.An -nosplit
This version of
.Nm
was written by
.An Mingye Wang Aq Mt arthur2e5@aosc.io .
.Nm
first appeared in Mac OS X 10.2. It received path-related capabilities
around Mac OS X 10.13.