Intro To 'arch' Command In Linux

2023-06-07 - By Robert Elder

     I use the 'arch' command to print out the current machine hardware name:

arch

x86_64

The 'arch' Command Is Just The 'uname' Command

     The output of the 'arch' command is identical to the output of the 'uname' command with the '-m' flag:

uname -m

x86_64

     And that's literally all this command does.

     This command only has two flags, one of which prints the executable version:

arch --version

arch (GNU coreutils) 8.30
Copyright (C) 2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by David MacKenzie and Karel Zak.

     and the other prints out a help page that helpfully indicates how to print this help page and also the version:

arch --help

Usage: arch [OPTION]...
Print machine architecture.

      --help     display this help and exit
      --version  output version information and exit

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Full documentation at: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/arch>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) arch invocation'

     If you view the source code for the 'arch' command you'll see that it's basically just the same executable as the 'uname' command. The only difference is a hard-coded global variable that identifies what the 'uname' command should output.

     And that's why the 'arch' command is my favourite Linux command.

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