intro(1M)intro(1M)NAMEintro - introduction to system maintenance commands and application
programs
DESCRIPTION
This section describes commands that are used chiefly for system main‐
tenance 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:
A single letter representing an option without an
argument.
Two or more single-letter options
combined into a single command-line argu‐
ment.
A single-letter option followed by a required
argument where:
arg_letter
is the single letter represent‐
ing 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 sup‐
plied by the system giving the cause for termination, and (in the case
of ``normal'' termination) one supplied by the program (for descrip‐
tions, 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 inaccessi‐
ble data. Values returned are usually called variously ``exit code'',
``exit status'', or ``return code'', and are described only where spe‐
cial conventions are involved.
WARNINGS
Some commands produce unexpected results when processing files contain‐
ing null characters. These commands often treat text input lines as
strings and therefore become confused upon encountering a null charac‐
ter (the string terminator) within a line.
SEE ALSOgetopt(1), exit(2), wait(2), getopt(3C), hier(5), introduction(9).
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