The sccs create Command

The sccs create command places your file under SCCS control. It creates a new history file, and uses the complete text of your source file as the initial version. By default, the history file resides in the SCCS subdirectory.

$ sccs create program.c 
program.c: 
1.1 
87 lines

The output from SCCS tells you the name of the created file, its version number (1.1), and the count of lines.

To prevent the accidental loss or damage to an original, sccs create makes a second link to it, prefixing the new filename with a comma (referred to as the comma-file.) When the history file has been initialized successfully, SCCS retrieves a new, read-only version. After you have verified the version against its comma-file, you can remove that file.

$ cmp ,program.c program.c 
(no output means that the files match exactly
$ rm ,program.c 

Do not try to edit the read-only version that SCCS retrieves. Before you can edit the file, you must check it out using the sccs edit command described below.

To distinguish the history file from a current version, SCCS uses the `s.' prefix. Owing to this prefix, the history file is often referred to as the s.file (s-dot-file). For historical reasons, it may also be referred to as the SCCS-file.

The format of an SCCS history file is described in sccsfile(4).