Equivalent to systemctl on Macos?

Hello,

I have read that the answer to the question is launchctl. I have done some tests and cannot get launchctl to work as systemctl in linux.

I have installed nginx from macports. If I enter some nonsense code in the the configuration files and run "sudo launchctl stop org.macports.nginx" followed by "sudo launchctl start org.macports.nginx" I don't get any output at all. I want it to be as in linux where systemctl returns an error if the code is wrong.

I know I can run "sudo nginx -s reload", but that is just nginx specific.

Am I doing anything wrong?

Fred