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command(1) General Commands Manual command(1) NAME command - Treats command arguments as simple commands SYNOPSIS command [-p] command_name [argument...] command [-v|-V] command_name The command command causes the shell to treat the arguments to command as simple commands, and suppresses the default shell function lookup. STANDARDS Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry stan- dards as follows: command: XPG4, XPG4-UNIX Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about in- dustry standards and associated tags. OPTIONS Performs the command search using a default value for PATH that is guaranteed to find all of the standard utilities. Writes a string to standard output that indicates the path name or command to be used by the shell in the current shell execution environment to invoke com- mand_name. Writes a string to standard output that indicates how the name given in the command_name operand will be interpreted by the shell in the current shell execution environment. DESCRIPTION The command command allows you to run the following commands: User-de- fined commands whose names correspond to shell built-in commands. Sys- tem commands whose names correspond to shell built-in commands. The command_name argument specifies the name of a utility. The one or more optional arguments to command_name specify strings treated as ar- guments to the specified utility. It also provides information con- cerning how a command name will be interpreted by the shell. NOTES [DIGITAL] If command_name is not the name of a function, the effect of command is the same as would be obtained by specifying command_name without command. RESTRICTIONS Since the -v and -V options to command produce output in relation to the current shell execution environment, if command is called in a sub- shell or separate utility execution environment, it may not produce correct results. The following are examples of this type of operation: (PATH=foo command -v) nohup command -v EXIT STATUS When the -v or -V options are specified, command returns one of the following values. Successful completion. The command_name could not be found, or an error occurred. If the -v or -V options are not specified, command returns one of the following values on error. The utility specified by command_name was found but could not be invoked. An error occurred in the command com- mand, or the utility specified by the command_name argument could not be invoked. If no error occurs, the exit status of command is that of the command specified by the arguments to command. EXAMPLES To ensure execution of the simple command pwd instead of the pwd shell built-in command, enter the following: command -p pwd The preceding command displays the full path name of the current direc- tory, and does not perpetuate a view of the current directory location created by links as the shell built-in command might do. ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES The following environment variables affect the execution of command: Provides a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the default locale is used. If any of the internationalization variables contains an invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of the variables had been defined. If set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of all the other internationalization variables. Determines 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). Determines the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error. Determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES. Determines the search path used during the command search unless the -p option is specified. SEE ALSO Commands: env(1), hash(1), type(1) Standards: standards(5) command(1)