man.postnix Miscellaneous man pages of Plan 9 related material

     SYSCALL(1)                                             SYSCALL(1)

     NAME
          syscall - test a system call

     SYNOPSIS
          syscall [ -osx ] entry [ arg ... ]

     DESCRIPTION
          Syscall invokes the system call entry with the given argu-
          ments.  (Some functions, such as write and read(2), although
          not strictly system calls, are valid entries.) It prints the
          return value and the error string, if there was an error.
          An argument is either an integer constant as in C (its value
          is passed), a string (its address is passed), or the literal
          buf (a pointer to a 1MB buffer is passed).

          If -o is given, the contents of the 1MB buffer are printed
          as a zero-terminated string after the system call is done.
          The -x and -s options are similar, but -x formats the data
          as hexadecimal bytes, while -s interprets the data as a
          stat(5) message and formats it similar to the style of ls
          -lqm (see ls(1)), with extra detail about the modify and
          access times.

     EXAMPLES
          Write a string to standard output:

               syscall write 1 hello 5

          Print information about the file connected to standard
          input:

               syscall -s fstat 0 buf 1024

     SOURCE
          /sys/src/cmd/syscall

     SEE ALSO
          Section 2 of this manual.

     DIAGNOSTICS
          If entry is not known to syscall, the exit status is
          `unknown'.  If the system call succeeds, the exit status is
          null; otherwise the exit status is the string that errstr(2)
          returns.

     Page 1                       Plan 9            (printed 10/23/25)