intro(1M)
intro - introduction to maintenance commands and application programs
As shipped in IRIX 6.5.30. Unchanged since IRIX 6.5.
NAME intro - introduction to maintenance commands and application programs DESCRIPTION This section describes, in alphabetical order, commands that are used chiefly for system maintenance and administration purposes. COMMAND SYNTAX Since almost all commands are run via the shells ( bsh(1),sh(1),csh(1), ksh(1),and tcsh(1)) diagnostic messages may be issued by the shells, prior to, or even instead of, the command itself being executed. A common case is too many arguments to the command. See the manual page for your shell for details. Unless otherwise noted, commands described in this section accept options and other arguments according to the following syntax: name [options] [cmdargs] where: name The name of an executable file. option -noargletter or -argletter<>optarg where <> is optional white space. noargletter A single letter representing an option without an argument. argletter A single letter representing an option requiring an argument. optarg Argument (character string) satisfying preceding argletter. cmdarg Pathname (or other command argument) not beginning with - or - by itself indicating the standard input. SEE ALSO getopt(1), exec(2), exit(2), wait(2), getopt(3C). DIAGNOSTICS Upon termination, each command returns two bytes of status, one supplied by the system and giving the cause for termination, and (in the case of ``normal'' termination) one supplied by the program (see wait(2) and exit(2)). The former byte is 0 for normal termination; the latter is customarily 0 for successful execution and non-zero to indicate troubles such as erroneous parameters, bad or inaccessible data, or other inability to cope with the task at hand. It is called variously exit code, exit status, or return code, and is described only where special conventions are involved. BUGS Regrettably, not all commands adhere to the aforementioned syntax.