On Linux and Solaris systems, the confstr() function and the sysconf() and pathconf() system calls can be used to programatically retrieve system, file and path limits. Periodically I need to view the value of a variable returned by sysconf(), pathconf() or confstr() from the command line. When these situations arise, I turn to the getconf utility. Getconf accepts a system variable name as an argument, and returns the value assigned to that variable:
$ <strong>getconf LONG_BIT
32
Getconf can also be invoked with the “-a” option to display all system and path variables along with their values:
$ getconf -a | more
AIO_LISTIO_MAX: 4096
AIO_MAX: undefined
AIO_PRIO_DELTA_MAX: 0
ARG_MAX: 1048320
ATEXIT_MAX: undefined
BC_BASE_MAX: 99
BC_DIM_MAX: 2048
BC_SCALE_MAX: 99
BC_STRING_MAX: 1000
CHARCLASS_NAME_MAX: 14
CHAR_BIT: 8
CHAR_MAX: 127
CHAR_MIN: -128
[ ..... ]
This is a useful utility, and is installed in /usr/bin on all the Linux and Solaris hosts I tested.