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.

November 9, 2010 | NetBSD 6.0