osx man page for plutil

PLUTIL(1)						    BSD General Commands Manual 						 PLUTIL(1)

NAME
     plutil -- property list utility

SYNOPSIS
     plutil [command_option] [other_options] file
	     ...

DESCRIPTION
     plutil can be used to check the syntax of property list files, or convert a plist file from one format to another.  Specifying - as an input
     file reads from stdin.

     The first argument indicates the operation to perform, one of:

     -help	   Show the usage information for the command and exit.

     -p 	   Print the property list in a human-readable fashion. The output format is not stable and not designed for machine parsing. The
		   purpose of this command is to be able to easily read the contents of a plist file, no matter what format it is in.

     -lint	   Check the named property list files for syntax errors.  This is the default command option if none is specified.

     -convert fmt  Convert the named file to the indicated format and write back to the file system.  If the file can't be loaded due to invalid
		   syntax, the operation fails.

		   fmt is one of:  xml1, for version 1 of the XML plist format binary1, for version 1 of the binary plist format json, for the
				   JSON format

     There are a few additional options:

     -- 	   Specifies that all further arguments are file names

     -s 	   Don't print anything on success.

     -r 	   For JSON, add whitespace and indentation to make the output more human-readable.

     -o path	   Specify an alternate path name for the result of the -convert operation; this option is only useful with a single file to be
		   converted.  Specifying - as the path outputs to stdout.

     -e extension  Specify an alternate extension for converted files, and the output file names are otherwise the same.

DIAGNOSTICS
     The plutil command exits 0 on success, and 1 on failure.

SEE ALSO
     plist(5)

STANDARDS
     The plutil command obeys no one's rules but its own.

HISTORY
     The plutil command first appeared in Mac OS X 10.2.

Mac OS X							  August 30, 2002							  Mac OS X