Parsing Command Output

Improvements to HP-UX often require changes in the output formats of commands like those described here. This can be troublesome when applications or scripts have been written that parse the outputs of those commands. For this reason, each of the primary kernel configuration commands (kcmodule, kctune, and kconfig) has a special output format, selected with the -P (parse) option, designed for parsing by applications. In addition to providing release-to-release compatibility, it is also easier to parse than human-readable output.

	CAUTION: HP reserves the right to change the other output formats of these commands at any time. HP will not support applications and scripts that parse the output of these commands unless they use the -P option.

The -P option of each of these commands takes a list of field names, identifying the fields that the application wants to have appear in the output. The available field names are different for each command and are documented in the manpages for the commands. The list is comma-separated and cannot contain spaces. Examples are shown in the sections “Managing Kernel Modules with kcmodule”, “Managing Kernel Tunable Parameters with kctune”, and “Managing Saved Configurations with kconfig”.

The special field name ALL can be used to retrieve all available data. When this field name is used, the output may include fields that are not listed in the manpage. The order of fields in the output is undefined.

The output format consists of one line per field, containing the field name, a single tab character (ASCII 9), the field value, and a newline (ASCII 12). The fields are printed in the order requested for each item, with empty lines between the items.

Some fields have multiple values. In these cases, there will be one line for each value of the field, each starting with the field name in the manner described.

Some fields do not have values under some circumstances. For example, the min or max tunable fields have no meaning for tunables that have no defined limits. In these cases, no line will be printed for that field.