ARCH(1) BSD Reference Manual ARCH(1)
arch, machine - print architecture type
arch [-ks] machine [-a]
The arch and machine commands display the machine's architecture in slightly different ways. arch by default displays the application archi- tecture, defined by both the operating system and the instruction set ar- chitecture, while machine displays the kernel architecture (without the operating system part). Note that both commands output the target archi- tecture as opposed to uname(1) which describes the host. This is useful for dynamic discovery of the target architecture in build or configura- tion scripts needing to work in cross-compilation environments. The options for arch are as follows: -k Display the kernel architecture instead of application architec- ture. -s Display the chosen architecture in a short form, i.e., without the operating system prefixed. The options for machine are as follows: -a Display the application architecture instead of the kernel archi- tecture.
uname(1) MirBSD #10-current June 22, 1996 1