Choose the 32 or 64 bit version of an app from command line

Question

I'm on Mac OS X, and I have an executable binary which is compatible with the x86_64 and i386 architectures.

From the command-line, I would like to choose which of these architectures has to be launched.

How to do that? Thanks.

Answer 1

Instead of:

$ executable_file

enter either:

$ arch -i386 executable_file

or:

$ arch -x86_64 executable_file