opensolaris man page for arch

arch(1) 							   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 architecture. 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 "architecture"). Machines that run different kernels  due
       to underlying hardware differences may be able to run the same application programs.

OPTIONS
       -k    Displays  the kernel architecture, such as sun4u.	This defines which specific SunOS kernel will run on the machine, and has implica-
	     tions 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 application binaries for this application architecture can run on the current	host  sys-
		   tem. The  archname must be a valid application architecture, 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.

       >0    An error occurred.

ATTRIBUTES
       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE 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  command  is  recommended.
       See  uname(1) for usage information.

SunOS 5.11							    21 Oct 2002 							   arch(1)