I was recently trying to set the value -1 on an object attribute using pdadmin.

object modify /WebSEAL/server-default/uri/path set attribute CBACacheResult -1

I tried to use quotes around the -1, but everything failed. I assumed the problem was caused by the value being a negative integer…

The documentation did not really help me , there is no mention of this here: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/sva/10.0.6?topic=commands-object-modify

It turned out it’s not the negative integer that is causing the problem, but command option processing…

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/sva/10.0.6?topic=commands-command-option-processing

So if you want to use values (or attributes) that start with a hyphen -, you need to use this syntax:

object modify /WebSEAL/server-default/uri/path set attribute CBACacheResult - -1

This also works if the value does not start with a hyphen , of course:

object modify /WebSEAL/server-default/uri/path set attribute CBACacheResult - 60

And this is also applicable for other pdadmin commands, for instance:

acl modify myacl - set attribute testattribute -1

In this sample you can also see that you can use the single hyphen anywhere in the command as long as you don’t have other command options following it.