Re: getconf _CS_PATH failure

[Eli Schwartz]

On 1/18/21 3:59 PM, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> Forgive my ignorance... According to
> https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904875/utilities/command.html
> this is supposed to work:
>
>      $ command -p getconf _CS_PATH
>      getconf: Unrecognized variable `_CS_PATH'
>
> Should the command be failing on Linux?

I don't see anywhere on that page that states a shell like bash is 
required to implement the "command" utility in such a way that, if 
"command -p getconf" is run, the "getconf" program being run will 
recognize any particular variable.

"command -p getconf" succeeded -- it found the "getconf" program and ran 
it. getconf then returned an error.

Maybe you should ask why _CS_PATH does not exist?

The answer to this could be found in the definition of getconf itself:

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904875/utilities/getconf.html

The following operands shall be supported:

system_var
    A name of a configuration variable. All of the following variables
    shall be supported:
     - The names of the symbolic constants used as the name argument of
       the confstr() function in the System Interfaces volume of IEEE
       Std 1003.1-2001, without the _CS_ prefix.


Indeed, on my Linux system,

$ command -p getconf PATH
/bin:/usr/bin


--
Eli Schwartz
Arch Linux Bug Wrangler and Trusted User

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