INTRO(1) — HP-UX

NAME

intro − introduction to command utilities and application programs

DESCRIPTION

This section describes commands accessible by users, as opposed to system calls in Section (2), or subroutines in Section (3), which are accessible by user programs.

Command Syntax

Unless otherwise noted, commands described in this section accept options and other arguments according to the following syntax:

name [option(s)] [cmdarg(s)]
where:

name The name of an executable file.

option − noargletter(s) or,
− argletter<>optarg
where <> is optional white space.

noargletter A single letter representing an option without an argument.

argletter A single letter representing an option requiring an argument.

optarg Argument (character string) satisfying preceding argletter.

cmdarg Path name (or other command argument) not beginning with − or, − by itself indicating the standard input.

DIAGNOSTICS

Upon termination, each command returns two bytes of status, one supplied by the system and giving the cause for termination, and (in the case of “normal” termination) one supplied by the program (for example, see wait(2) and exit(2)). The former byte is 0 for normal termination; the latter is customarily 0 for successful execution and non-zero to indicate troubles such as erroneous parameters, bad or inaccessible data. It is called variously “exit code”, “exit status”, or “return code”, and is 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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