General syntax of the commands section

The format for a line in the "commands" section is as follows:

commands "cmd1" [ ... "cmdn" ] use flags "class"

In this line, the cmd1 ... cmdn are the basenames of the programs (commands) for which this line should apply. The basename is the name without the path, i.e. ls instead of /usr/bin/ls. The command names should be enclosed in quotes. You may also use the keyword default (without quotes) to match all commands.

The flags describe those aspects of zlibc's behaviour that are independant from the datafile which is being accessed. These flags come in pairs. The flags need not to be listed on a single commands line, they may occur in several places, even in several different configuration files (for instance one in /etc/zlibc.conf and another one in ~/.zlibrc.

If two contradictory flags are found in the configuration files, the one which is seen first is taken.

If on the other hand a certain flag is not found at all in the configuration files, the compiled-in default for this flag is used. This is usually the second flag of each pair, described below (see section Available commands line flags).

These flags can all be overridden by environmental variables. When the corresponding environmental variable is set to 1 or to on, the first flag is used, when it is set to 0 or to off. If the environmental variables is set to neither of these 4 values, it is ignored).

The class names the commands class that these commands belong to. If, for a given command, two commands lines give different classes, the one which is seen first is taken. No union of classes is made, the classes are always treated as a whole. Thus, if you want to make a change to a command class, you need to describe it in its entirety.

The following example says that the tar, cpio, pax, cp and mv show compressed files in a directory listing (readdir_compr flag), and are of class generic_safe.

commands "tar" "cpio" "pax" "cp" "mv" use readdir_compr "generic_safe"

The class generic_safe would then need to be described further in the class section.

Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.