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P4 CLI Documentation | 2026.1

# Submit a pending changelist

To submit a pending changelist, issue the `p4 submit` command. When you issue the `p4 submit` command, a form is displayed, listing the files in the changelist. You can remove files from this list. The files you remove remain open in the default pending changelist until you submit them or revert them.

To submit specific files that are open in the default changelist, issue the `p4 submit filename` command. To specify groups of files, use wildcards. For example, to submit all text files open in the default changelist, type `p4 submit "*".txt`. (Use quotation marks as an escape code around the `*` wildcard to prevent it from being interpreted by the local command shell).

After you save the changelist form and exit the text editor, the changelist is submitted to the P4 Server, and the files in the depot are updated. After a changelist has been successfully submitted, only a P4 Server administrator can change it, and the only fields that can be changed are the description and user name.

If an error occurs when you submit the default changelist, P4 Server creates a numbered changelist containing the files you attempted to submit. You must then fix the problems and submit the numbered changelist using the `-c` option.

P4 Server enables write permission for files that you open for edit and disables write permission when you successfully submit the changelist containing the files. To prevent conflicts with P4 Server’s management of your workspace, do not change file write permissions manually.

Before committing a changelist, `p4 submit` briefly locks all files being submitted. If any file cannot be locked or submitted, the files are left open in a numbered pending changelist. By default, the files in a failed submit operation are left locked unless the `submit.unlocklocked` configurable is set. Files are unlocked even if they were manually locked prior to submit if submit fails when `submit.unlocklocked` is set.

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