lfmt(1)

lfmt -- display error message in standard format and pass to logging and monitoring services

Synopsis

lfmt [-c] [-f flags] [-l label] [-s severity] [-g catalog:msgid] format [args]

Description

lfmt uses format for printf-style formatting of args. lfmt encapsulates the output in the standard error message format and displays the output on stderr. In addition, lfmt forwards its output to the logging and monitoring facility.

The following options are available.

-c

Also display the output on the console, with a date and time stamp.

-f flags

Specify logging information as a comma-separated list of keywords from the following sets:

``Major classification'': Identifies the source of the condition. Identifiers are: hard (hardware), soft (software), and firm (firmware).
``Message source subclassification'': Identifies the type of software in which the problem is spotted. Identifiers are: appl (application), util (utility), and opsys (operating system).

-g catalog:msgid

Specify that a localized version of format should be retrieved from a locale-specific message database. catalog indicates the message database that contains the localized version of the format string. catalog must be limited to 14 characters. These characters must be selected from a set of all character values, excluding ``\0'' (null) and the ASCII codes for ``/'' (slash) and ``:'' (colon).

msgid is a positive number that indicates the index of the string into the message database.

If catalog does not exist in the current locale (identified by the LC_MESSAGES or LANG environment variables), or if msgid is out of bounds, lfmt will attempt to retrieve the message from the C locale. If this second retrieval fails, lfmt uses the format string as passed on the command line.

lfmt will output Message not found!!\n as the format string if catalog is not a valid catalog name, or if msgid is not a valid number as defined above.

-l label

Specify the label string to be displayed with the message (for example, "UX:cat"). label is a character string no more than 25 characters in length; it will be automatically suffixed with a colon (``:''). When unspecified, no label is displayed as part of the message.

-s severity

Specify the severity string to be displayed with the message. Acceptable strings include the standard severities in either their print string (that is, HALT, ERROR, INFO, WARNING, and "TO FIX") or keyword (that is, halt, error, info, warn, and action) forms, or any other user-defined string. A user-defined string will be assigned the integer severity value of 5. The severity will be suffixed with a colon (``:''). The ERROR severity will be used if no severity is specified.

The keywords and definitions of the standard levels of severity are:

halt: application has encountered a severe fault and is halting
error: application has detected a fault
warn: application has detected a condition that is out of the ordinary and might be a problem
info: application is providing information about a condition that is not in error
nostd: do not print a severity message

Standard error message format

lfmt displays error messages in the following format:

   label: severity: text

If no label was defined using the -l label option, the message is displayed in the format:

   severity: text

If lfmt is called twice to display an error message and a helpful action or recovery message, the output can look like the following:

   label: severity: text
   label: TO FIX: text

Examples

   lfmt -f soft,util -l UX:test -s info "test facility enabled\n"

displays the message to stderr and makes it available for logging:

   UX:test: INFO: test facility enabled

References

environ(5), gettxt(1), lfmt(3C), pfmt(1), pfmt(3C), printf(1)

Diagnostics

Upon success, lfmt exits with code 0.

Upon failure, lfmt exits with the following codes:

1: write error
2: cannot log or forward to console
3: syntax error