The lpr command

The lpr command lets you send a UNIX file to a network printer.

You can send either TEXT files or PostScript files to the printer. All other types of files will probably not print out correctly.

The lpr command produces no output unless you have made a mistake.

There are many different printers on the network, and you need to tell the lpr command which printer to use

lpr -Pprinter_name file_to_print

To get a list of the network printers, type

If you want to send a PostScript file to the printer in B481, you should use the command

lpr -Ppostscript file_to_print

Other popular lpr commands include

What to Type	What it Does
`lpr -Pmmlab file1`	send "file1" to the printer in Beckman 050
`lpstat -a`	list all the printers
`lpq -Pprinter_name`	see who is also printing to the printer and list the print job numbers
`lprm -Pprinter_name 200`	remove print job #200 from a printer You can only do that if you own that job

For more help with the lpr command or to see the online UNIX manual and all the extensions to the lpr command, click here.