arch

arch

arch prints the machine hardware architecture. On Linux this is the GNU coreutils command, equivalent to uname -m. There are no options other than --help and --version.Common outputs include:- x86_64: 64-bit Intel/AMD- aarch64 or arm64: 64-bit ARM- i686 or i386: 32-bit Intel- armv7l: 32-bit ARM- ppc64le: 64-bit PowerPC little-endian- riscv64: 64-bit RISC-V

The reported value depends on the kernel personality, not the silicon — running under setarch or in a 32-bit chroot can make a 64-bit machine report i686. On macOS the system arch binary is unrelated; it switches a process to a different architecture instead of printing one.

arch has been available on Unix systems since BSD. On Linux, it's part of coreutils and provides a simple wrapper around uname.

uname(1), setarch(8), hostnamectl(1)