NAME

pathchk − check path names

SYNOPSIS

pathchk [-p] pathname...

DESCRIPTION

The pathchk command checks that one or more path names are valid and portable.  By default, the pathchk command checks each component of each path name specified by the pathname parameter based on the underlying file system.  An error message is written for each path name operand that:

• is longer than that allowed by the system. 

• contains any component longer than that allowed by the system. 

• contains any component in a directory that is not searchable. 

• contains any character in any component that is not valid in its containing directory. 

It is not considered an error if one or more components of a path name do not exist, as long as a file matching the path name specified by the pathname parameter could be created that does not violate any of the checks above. 

More extensive portability checks are performed when the -p flag is specified. 

Options

The pathchk command supports the following option:

-p Performs path name checks based on POSIX portability standards instead of the underlying file system.  An error message is written for each path name that:

• is longer than _POSIX_PATH_MAX bytes. 

• contains any component longer than _POSIX_NAME_MAX bytes. 

• contains any character in any component that is not in the portable file name character set. 

EXTERNAL INFLUENCES

Environment Variables

LC_MESSAGES determines the language in which messages are displayed. 

If LC_MESSAGES is not specified in the environment or is set to the empty string, the value of LANG is used as a default for each unspecified or empty variable.  If LANG is not specified or is set to the empty string, a default of "C" (see lang(5)) is used instead of LANG. 

If any internationalization variable contains an invalid setting, pathchk behaves as if all internationalization variables are set to "C".  See environ(5).

International Code Set Support

Single-byte and multi-byte character code sets are supported. 

RETURN VALUE

Upon successful completion, pathchk returns zero; otherwise it returns nonzero to indicate an error. 

EXAMPLES

To check the validity and portability of the

/users/mary/work/tempfiles

path name on your system, use:

pathchk /users/mary/work/tempfiles

To check the validity and portability of the

/users/mary/temp

path name for POSIX standards, use:

pathchk -p /users/mary/temp

STANDARDS CONFORMANCE

pathchk: XPG4, POSIX.2

Hewlett-Packard Company  —  HP-UX Release 10.20:  July 1996