PATHCHK(1)                BSD General Commands Manual               PATHCHK(1)

NAME
     pathchk -- check pathnames

SYNOPSIS
     pathchk [-p] pathname ...

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

     A diagnostic message is written for each argument that:

     ]o   Is longer than PATHMAX bytes.

     ]o   Contains any component longer than NAMEMAX bytes.  (The value of
         NAMEMAX depends on the underlying file system.)

     ]o   Contains a directory component that is not searchable.

     It is not considered an error if a pathname argument contains a nonexis-
     tent 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:

             ]o   Is longer than POSIXPATHMAX (255) bytes.

             ]o   Contains a component longer than POSIXNAMEMAX (14) bytes.

             ]o   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 . -print  xargs pathchk -p

DIAGNOSTICS
     The pathchk utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

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

STANDARDS
     The pathchk utility conforms to IE Std 1003.1-2001 (``POSIX.1'').

HISTORY
     A pathchk utility appeared in FreeBSD 5.0.

BSD                              May 21, 2002                              BSD