dscl is a general-purpose utility for operating on Directory Service directory nodes.
dscl is a general-purpose utility for operating on Directory Service directory nodes. Its commands allow one to create, read, and manage Directory Service data. If invoked without any commands, dscl runs in an interactive mode, reading commands from standard input. Interactive processing is terminated by the quit command. Leading dashes ("-") are optional for all commands.
dscl operates on a datasource specified on the command line. This may be a node name or a Mac OS X Server (10.2 or later) host specified by DNS hostname or IP address. Node names may be absolute paths beginning with a slash ("/"), or relative domain paths beginning with a dot (".") character, which specifies the local domain, or "..", specifying the local domain's parent. If the hostname or IP address form is used then the user must specify the -u option and either the -P of -p options to specify an administrative user and password on the remote host to authenticate with to the remote host. The exception to this is if "localhost" is specified. Passing passwords on the command line is inherently insecure and can cause password exposure. For better security do not provide the password as part of the command and you will be securely prompted.
