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PATHCHK(1)                  General Commands Manual                 PATHCHK(1)

NAME
     pathchk - check pathnames

SYNOPSIS
     pathchk [-p] pathname ...

DESCRIPTION
     The pathchk utility checks whether each of the specified pathname
     arguments is valid or portable.

     A diagnostic message is written for each argument that:

     ⊕   Is longer than PATH_MAX bytes.

     ⊕   Contains any component longer than NAME_MAX bytes.  (The value of
         NAME_MAX depends on the underlying file system.)

     ⊕   Contains a directory component that is not searchable.

     It is not considered an error if a pathname argument contains a
     nonexistent component as long as a component by that name could be
     created.

     The options are as follows:

     -p      Perform portability checks on the specified pathname arguments.
             Diagnostic messages will be written for each argument that:

             ⊕   Is longer than _POSIX_PATH_MAX (255) bytes.

             ⊕   Contains a component longer than _POSIX_NAME_MAX (14) bytes.

             ⊕   Contains any character not in the portable filename character
                 set (that is, alphanumeric characters, `.', `-' and `_').  No
                 component may start with the hyphen (`-') character.

EXAMPLES
     Check whether the names of files in the current directory are portable to
     other POSIX systems:

           find . -exec pathchk -p \{\} +
     or the more efficient:
           find . -print0 | xargs -0 pathchk -p

SEE ALSO
     getconf(1), pathconf(2), stat(2)

STANDARDS
     The pathchk utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 ("POSIX.1").

HISTORY
     A pathchk utility appeared in NetBSD 2.0.

NetBSD 11.99                   November 9, 2010                   NetBSD 11.99