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

NAME
     pathchk — check pathnames

SYNOPSIS
     pathchk [-pP] 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:

     ·	 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 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:

	     ·	 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.

     -P      In addition to the default or -p checks, write a diagnostic for
	     each argument that:

	     ·	 Is empty.

	     ·	 Contains a component that starts with a hyphen.

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

EXAMPLES
     Check whether the names of files in the current directory are portable to
     other POSIX systems:

	   find . -exec 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 FreeBSD 5.0.

BSD				  May 1, 2010				   BSD