LP(1)

NAME
lp - front-end to the print spooler

SYNOPSIS
lp [-c] [-d -printer] [-n num] [name ...]

DESCRIPTION
Lp is a front-end to the print spooler as required by the p1003.2 specification. It effectively invokes lpr(1) with the proper set of arguments. It generally prints the named files on the destination printer.

Option -c makes the lp command exit only after further access to any of the input files is no longer required. The application can then safely delete or modify the files without affecting the output operation. To specify a particular printer, option -d dest can be used. If no -d is provided on the command line, the contents of the environmental variables LPDEST or PRINTER (with this precedence) are taken as the destination printer. Option -n num can be used to specify that num copies of each of the named files shall be printed.

ENVIRONMENT
As described above, the variables LPDEST and PRINTER are examined to select the destination printer.

SEE ALSO
lpr(1)

STANDARDS
The lp command is expected to comply with the p1003.2 specification.

AUTHOR
This implementation of the lp command has been written by Joerg Wunsch.

BUGS
The lp command inherits several bugs from the utilities invoked, namely it requires any option separated from its argument by a whitespace since the getopts implementation of sh(1) is broken, and it does not honour dashes as input file names (meant to use standard input) since lpr(1) ignores them. The p1003.2 specification does not provide any means to print non-text files. It rather requires the files to be printed to be text files limited to reasonable line lengths and printable characters.