| 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
 
STANDARDS
 The pathchk utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”).
HISTORY
 A pathchk utility appeared in NetBSD 2.0.