HASH(1P)

PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME
hash - remember or report utility locations

SYNOPSIS

hash [utility...]

hash -r

DESCRIPTION

The hash utility shall affect the way the current shell environment remembers the locations of utilities found as described in Command Search and Execution . Depending on the arguments specified, it shall add utility locations to its list of remembered locations or it shall purge the contents of the list. When no arguments are specified, it shall report on the contents of the list.

Utilities provided as built-ins to the shell shall not be reported by hash.

OPTIONS

The hash utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.

The following option shall be supported:

-r  Forget all previously remembered utility locations.

OPERANDS

The following operand shall be supported:

utility
    The name of a utility to be searched for and added to the list of remembered locations. If utility contains one or more slashes, the results are unspecified.

STDIN

Not used.

INPUT FILES

None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

The following environment variables shall affect the execution of hash:

LANG
    Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for the precedence of internationalization variables used to determine the values of locale categories.)

LC_ALL
    If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalization variables.

LC_CTYPE
    Determine 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).

LC_MESSAGES
    Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error.

NLSPATH
    Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES .

PATH
    Determine the location of utility, as described in the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Chapter 8, Environment Variables.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS

Default.

STDOUT

The standard output of hash shall be used when no arguments are specified. Its format is unspecified, but includes the pathname of each utility in the list of remembered locations for the current shell environment. This list shall consist of those utilities named in previous hash invocations that have been invoked, and may contain those invoked and found through the normal command search process.

STDERR

The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES

None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION

None.

EXIT STATUS

The following exit values shall be returned:

0   Successful completion.

>0  An error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS

Default.

The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE

Since hash affects the current shell execution environment, it is always provided as a shell regular built-in. If it is called in a separate utility execution environment, such as one of the following:

    nohup hash -r
    find . -type f | xargs hash

it does not affect the command search process of the caller's environment.

The hash utility may be implemented as an alias-for example, alias -t -, in which case utilities found through normal command search are not listed by the hash command.

The effects of hash -r can also be achieved portably by resetting the value of PATH ; in the simplest form, this can be:

    PATH="$PATH"

The use of hash with utility names is unnecessary for most applications, but may provide a performance improvement on a few implementations; normally, the hashing process is included by default.

EXAMPLES

None.

RATIONALE

None.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

None.

SEE ALSO

Command Search and Execution

COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .