intro(1) intro(1)
NAME
intro - introduction to commands and application programs
DESCRIPTION
This section describes, in alphabetical order, commands,
including user commands, programming commands and
administrative commands.
There are several instances of multiple manual pages with the
same name. For example, there are several manual pages called
mount(1M). In each such case the first of the multiple pages
describes the syntax and options of the generic command, that
is, those options applicable to all FSTypes (file system
types). The succeeding pages describe the functionality of
the FSType-specific modules of the command. These pages all
display the name of the FSType to which they pertain as a
suffix to the section number in the command name. You should
not attempt to call these modules directly-the generic command
provides a common interface to all of them. Thus the FSType-
specific manual pages should not be viewed as describing
distinct commands, but rather as detailing those aspects of a
command that are specific to a particular FSType.
Manual Page Command Syntax
Unless otherwise noted, commands described in the SYNOPSIS
section of a manual page accept options and other arguments
according to the following syntax:
name [-option ... ] [cmdarg ... ]
The meaning of this notation is as follows:
[] surround an option or cmdarg that is not required
. . . indicates multiple occurrences of the option or
cmdarg
name the name of an executable file
option noargletter ... or argletter optarg[, ...]
(always preceded by a ``-'')
noargletter a single letter representing an option without an
option-argument. Note that more than one
noargletter option can be grouped after one ``-''
(Rule 5, below).
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argletter A single letter representing an option requiring
an option-argument.
optarg An option-argument (character string) satisfying
a preceding argletter. Note that groups of
optargs following an argletter must be separated
by commas, or separated by white space and quoted
(Rule 8, below).
cmdarg Path name (or other command argument) not
beginning with ``-'', or ``-'' by itself
indicating the standard input.
Command Syntax Standard: Rules
These command syntax rules are not followed by all commands.
getopts(1) should be used by all shell procedures to parse
positional parameters and to check for legal options. It
supports Rules 3-10 below. The enforcement of the other rules
must be done by the command itself.
1. Command names (name above) must be between two and nine
characters long.
2. Command names must include only lower-case letters and
digits.
3. Option names (option above) must be one character long.
4. All options must be preceded by ``-''.
5. Options with no arguments may be grouped after a single
``-''.
6. The first option-argument (optarg above) following an
option must be preceded by white space.
7. Option-arguments cannot be optional.
8. Groups of option-arguments following an option must
either be separated by commas, or separated by white
space and quoted (for example, -o xxx,z,yy or -o "xxx z
yy").
9. All options must precede operands (cmdarg above) on the
command line.
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10. ``--'' may be used to indicate the end of the options.
11. The order of the options relative to one another should
not matter.
12. The relative order of the operands (cmdarg above) may
affect their significance in ways determined by the
command with which they appear.
13. ``-'' preceded and followed by white space should only
be used to mean 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 [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, or bad or inaccessible data. It
is called variously ``exit code,'' ``exit status,'' or
``return code,'' and is described only where special
conventions are involved.
Copyright 1994 Novell, Inc. Page 3