NAME
intro — introduction to system maintenance commands and application programs
DESCRIPTION
This section describes commands
that are used chiefly for system maintenance and administration purposes.
The commands in this section should be used in conjunction with other
sections of this manual, as well as the
HP-UX
System Administration manuals for your system.
Command Syntax
Unless otherwise noted, commands described in this section accept options and
other arguments according to the following syntax:
name [ option ( s )] [ cmd_arg ( s )]
where the elements are defined as follows:
- name
Name of an executable file.
- option
One or more
options
can appear on a command line.
Each takes one of the following forms:
- -no_arg_letter
A single letter representing an option without an argument.
- -no_arg_letters
Two or more single-letter options
combined into a single command-line argument.
- -arg_letter<>opt_arg
A single-letter option followed by a required argument where:
- arg_letter
is the single letter representing an option that requires an argument,
- opt_arg
is an argument (character string) satisfying the preceding
arg_letter,
- <>
represents optional white space.
- cmd_arg
Path name (or other command argument)
not
beginning with
-,
or
-
by itself indicating the standard input.
If two or more
cmd_args
appear, they must be separated by white space.
RETURN STATUS
Upon termination, each command returns two bytes of status,
one supplied by the system giving the cause for termination,
and (in the case of ``normal'' termination) one supplied by the program
(for descriptions, see
wait(2)
and
exit(2)).
The system-supplied byte is 0 for normal termination.
The byte provided by the program is customarily 0
for successful execution and non-zero to indicate errors
or failure such as incorrect parameters in the command line,
or bad or inaccessible data.
Values returned are usually called variously ``exit code'',
``exit status'', or ``return code'', and are described
only where special conventions are involved.
WARNINGS
Some commands produce unexpected results
when processing files containing null characters.
These commands often treat text input lines as strings and therefore
become confused upon encountering a null character (the string terminator)
within a line.
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