WHAT(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual WHAT(1P)
PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the correspond-
ing Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.
NAME
what -- identify SCCS files (DEVELOPMENT)
SYNOPSIS
what [-s] file...
DESCRIPTION
The what utility shall search the given files for all occurrences of the pattern that get (see get) substitutes for the %Z% keyword
("@(#)") and shall write to standard output what follows until the first occurrence of one of the following:
" > newline NUL
OPTIONS
The what utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1-2008, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.
The following option shall be supported:
-s Quit after finding the first occurrence of the pattern in each file.
OPERANDS
The following operands shall be supported:
file A pathname of a file to search.
STDIN
Not used.
INPUT FILES
The input files shall be of any file type.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of what:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions volume of
POSIX.1-2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for the precedence of internationalization variables used to determine
the values of locale categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalization variables.
LC_CTYPE Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed
to multi-byte characters in arguments and input files).
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error.
NLSPATH Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.
STDOUT
The standard output shall consist of the following for each file operand:
"%s:
%s
", <pathname>, <identification string>
STDERR
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
OUTPUT FILES
None.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 Any matches were found.
1 Otherwise.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
Default.
The following sections are informative.
APPLICATION USAGE
The what utility is intended to be used in conjunction with the SCCS command get, which automatically inserts identifying information, but
it can also be used where the information is inserted by any other means.
When the string "@(#)" is included in a library routine in a shared library, it might not be found in an a.out file using that library rou-
tine.
EXAMPLES
If the C-language program in file f.c contains:
char ident[] = "@(#)identification information";
and f.c is compiled to yield f.o and a.out, then the command:
what f.c f.o a.out
writes:
f.c:
identification information
...
f.o:
identification information
...
a.out:
identification information
...
RATIONALE
None.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
get
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1-2008, Chapter 8, Environment Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technol-
ogy -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the
event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Stan-
dard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source
files to man page format. To report such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE
/The Open Group 2013 WHAT(1P)