User Commands                                             arch(1)



NAME
     arch - display the architecture of the current host

SYNOPSIS
     arch [-k  archname]


DESCRIPTION
     The arch utility displays the  application  architecture  of
     the  current host system. Due to extensive historical use of
     this command without any options, all SunOS 5.x SPARC  based
     systems  will  return  "sun4" as their application architec-
     ture. Use of this command is discouraged. See NOTES  section
     below.


     Systems can be broadly classified  by  their  architectures,
     which  define what executables will run on which machines. A
     distinction can be  made  between  kernel  architecture  and
     application  architecture  (or,  commonly,  just  "architec-
     ture"). Machines that run different kernels due to  underly-
     ing  hardware differences may be able to run the same appli-
     cation programs.

OPTIONS
     -k    Displays the kernel architecture, such as sun4u.  This
           defines  which  specific  SunOS kernel will run on the
           machine, and has implications only for  programs  that
           depend on the kernel explicitly (for example, ps(1)).


OPERANDS
     The following operand is supported:

     archname    Use archname to determine whether  the  applica-
                 tion  binaries for this application architecture
                 can  run  on  the  current  host   system.   The
                 archname  must  be a valid application architec-
                 ture, such as  sun4, i86pc, and so forth.

                 If application binaries for archname can run  on
                 the  current  host system, TRUE (0) is returned.
                 Otherwise,  FALSE (1) is returned.


EXIT STATUS
     The following exit values are returned:

     0     Successful completion.






SunOS 5.11          Last change: 21 Oct 2002                    1






User Commands                                             arch(1)



     >0    An error occurred.


ATRIBUTES
     See attributes(5) for descriptions of the  following  attri-
     butes:



     
           ATRIBUTE TYPE               ATRIBUTE VALUE       
    
     Availability                 SUNWcsu                     
    


SEE ALSO
     mach(1), ps(1), uname(1), attributes(5)

NOTES
     This command is provided  for  compatibility  with  previous
     releases and its use is discouraged. Instead, the uname com-
     mand is recommended. See  uname(1) for usage information.
































SunOS 5.11          Last change: 21 Oct 2002                    2