Open System Services Shell and Utilities Reference Manual (G06.27+, H06.04+)

User Commands (p - r) pax(1)
-i Renames files or archives interactively. For each archive member that matches the
pat-
tern operand or file operand, a prompt is written to the terminal associated with the pax
process. The prompt contains the name of the file or archive member that is to be
renamed. Users’ responses are also read from the terminal.
If the user’s response to the prompt is empty, the file or archive member is skipped. If
the response is a single period (dot), the file or archive member is processed with no
modification to its name. Otherwise, the name of the file or archive member is replaced
with the contents of the response.
The pax utility immediately terminates with a nonzero exit value if an end-of-file is
encountered when reading a response. The pax utility terminates with a nonzero exit
value if an interrupt signal is received, or if the terminal cannot be opened for reading
and writing.
-k Prevents pax from writing over existing files (in read and copy modes).
-l Links files. In copy mode, hard links are made between the source and destination file
hierarchies whenever possible.
-L Archives the file hierarchy rooted in the file referenced by the link, using the name of
the link as the root of the file hierarchy. The default action is to archive the symbolic
link itself.
-n Selects the first archive member that matches each pattern operand. No more than one
archive member is matched for each pattern (although members of type directory will
still match the file hierarchy rooted at that file).
-p string Specifies one or more file characteristic options (privileges). The string argument must
be a string specifying the file characteristics to be retained or discarded on extraction,
subject to the permissions of the invoking process. Otherwise, the attribute is deter-
mined as part of the normal file creation action.
The string can consist of any combination of the following options:
a Do not preserve file access times.
e Preserve the user ID, group ID, file mode bits, file access times, and file
modification times when the user executing the pax command has a logon ID with
appropriate privileges.
m Do not preserve file modification times.
o Preserve the user ID and group ID when the user executing the pax command has
a logon ID with appropriate privileges.
p Preserve the file mode bits.
Multiple -p options are allowed in one command. If an option in string duplicates or
conflicts with another option in string, the option given last takes precedence.
If neither the -e nor the -o option is specified, or if the user ID and group ID are not
retained, pax does not set the S_ISUID and S_ISGID bits of the access permission. If
the retention of any of these items fails, pax writes a diagnostic message to the stan-
dard error file. Failure to retain any of the items affects the exit value but does not
cause the extracted file to be deleted.
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