This is libc.info, produced by makeinfo version 6.5 from libc.texinfo. This file documents the GNU C Library. This is ‘The GNU C Library Reference Manual’, for version 2.28. Copyright © 1993–2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant Sections being “Free Software Needs Free Documentation” and “GNU Lesser General Public License”, the Front-Cover texts being “A GNU Manual”, and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License". (a) The FSF’s Back-Cover Text is: “You have the freedom to copy and modify this GNU manual. Buying copies from the FSF supports it in developing GNU and promoting software freedom.” INFO-DIR-SECTION Software libraries START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY * Libc: (libc). C library. END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY INFO-DIR-SECTION GNU C library functions and macros START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY * ALTWERASE: (libc)Local Modes. * ARGP_ERR_UNKNOWN: (libc)Argp Parser Functions. * ARG_MAX: (libc)General Limits. * BC_BASE_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits. * BC_DIM_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits. * BC_SCALE_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits. * BC_STRING_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits. * BRKINT: (libc)Input Modes. * BUFSIZ: (libc)Controlling Buffering. * CCTS_OFLOW: (libc)Control Modes. * CHAR_BIT: (libc)Width of Type. * CHILD_MAX: (libc)General Limits. * CIGNORE: (libc)Control Modes. * CLK_TCK: (libc)Processor Time. * CLOCAL: (libc)Control Modes. * CLOCKS_PER_SEC: (libc)CPU Time. * COLL_WEIGHTS_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits. * CPU_CLR: (libc)CPU Affinity. * CPU_ISSET: (libc)CPU Affinity. * CPU_SET: (libc)CPU Affinity. * CPU_SETSIZE: (libc)CPU Affinity. * CPU_ZERO: (libc)CPU Affinity. * CREAD: (libc)Control Modes. * CRTS_IFLOW: (libc)Control Modes. * CS5: (libc)Control Modes. * CS6: (libc)Control Modes. * CS7: (libc)Control Modes. * CS8: (libc)Control Modes. * CSIZE: (libc)Control Modes. * CSTOPB: (libc)Control Modes. * DTTOIF: (libc)Directory Entries. * E2BIG: (libc)Error Codes. * EACCES: (libc)Error Codes. * EADDRINUSE: (libc)Error Codes. * EADDRNOTAVAIL: (libc)Error Codes. * EADV: (libc)Error Codes. * EAFNOSUPPORT: (libc)Error Codes. * EAGAIN: (libc)Error Codes. * EALREADY: (libc)Error Codes. * EAUTH: (libc)Error Codes. * EBACKGROUND: (libc)Error Codes. * EBADE: (libc)Error Codes. * EBADF: (libc)Error Codes. * EBADFD: (libc)Error Codes. * EBADMSG: (libc)Error Codes. * EBADR: (libc)Error Codes. * EBADRPC: (libc)Error Codes. * EBADRQC: (libc)Error Codes. * EBADSLT: (libc)Error Codes. * EBFONT: (libc)Error Codes. * EBUSY: (libc)Error Codes. * ECANCELED: (libc)Error Codes. * ECHILD: (libc)Error Codes. * ECHO: (libc)Local Modes. * ECHOCTL: (libc)Local Modes. * ECHOE: (libc)Local Modes. * ECHOK: (libc)Local Modes. * ECHOKE: (libc)Local Modes. * ECHONL: (libc)Local Modes. * ECHOPRT: (libc)Local Modes. * ECHRNG: (libc)Error Codes. * ECOMM: (libc)Error Codes. * ECONNABORTED: (libc)Error Codes. * ECONNREFUSED: (libc)Error Codes. * ECONNRESET: (libc)Error Codes. * ED: (libc)Error Codes. * EDEADLK: (libc)Error Codes. * EDEADLOCK: (libc)Error Codes. * EDESTADDRREQ: (libc)Error Codes. * EDIED: (libc)Error Codes. * EDOM: (libc)Error Codes. * EDOTDOT: (libc)Error Codes. * EDQUOT: (libc)Error Codes. * EEXIST: (libc)Error Codes. * EFAULT: (libc)Error Codes. * EFBIG: (libc)Error Codes. * EFTYPE: (libc)Error Codes. * EGRATUITOUS: (libc)Error Codes. * EGREGIOUS: (libc)Error Codes. * EHOSTDOWN: (libc)Error Codes. * EHOSTUNREACH: (libc)Error Codes. * EHWPOISON: (libc)Error Codes. * EIDRM: (libc)Error Codes. * EIEIO: (libc)Error Codes. * EILSEQ: (libc)Error Codes. * EINPROGRESS: (libc)Error Codes. * EINTR: (libc)Error Codes. * EINVAL: (libc)Error Codes. * EIO: (libc)Error Codes. * EISCONN: (libc)Error Codes. * EISDIR: (libc)Error Codes. * EISNAM: (libc)Error Codes. * EKEYEXPIRED: (libc)Error Codes. * EKEYREJECTED: (libc)Error Codes. * EKEYREVOKED: (libc)Error Codes. * EL2HLT: (libc)Error Codes. * EL2NSYNC: (libc)Error Codes. * EL3HLT: (libc)Error Codes. * EL3RST: (libc)Error Codes. * ELIBACC: (libc)Error Codes. * ELIBBAD: (libc)Error Codes. * ELIBEXEC: (libc)Error Codes. * ELIBMAX: (libc)Error Codes. * ELIBSCN: (libc)Error Codes. * ELNRNG: (libc)Error Codes. * ELOOP: (libc)Error Codes. * EMEDIUMTYPE: (libc)Error Codes. * EMFILE: (libc)Error Codes. * EMLINK: (libc)Error Codes. * EMSGSIZE: (libc)Error Codes. * EMULTIHOP: (libc)Error Codes. * ENAMETOOLONG: (libc)Error Codes. * ENAVAIL: (libc)Error Codes. * ENEEDAUTH: (libc)Error Codes. * ENETDOWN: (libc)Error Codes. * ENETRESET: (libc)Error Codes. * ENETUNREACH: (libc)Error Codes. * ENFILE: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOANO: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOBUFS: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOCSI: (libc)Error Codes. * ENODATA: (libc)Error Codes. * ENODEV: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOENT: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOEXEC: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOKEY: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOLCK: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOLINK: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOMEDIUM: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOMEM: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOMSG: (libc)Error Codes. * ENONET: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOPKG: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOPROTOOPT: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOSPC: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOSR: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOSTR: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOSYS: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOTBLK: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOTCONN: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOTDIR: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOTEMPTY: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOTNAM: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOTRECOVERABLE: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOTSOCK: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOTSUP: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOTTY: (libc)Error Codes. * ENOTUNIQ: (libc)Error Codes. * ENXIO: (libc)Error Codes. * EOF: (libc)EOF and Errors. * EOPNOTSUPP: (libc)Error Codes. * EOVERFLOW: (libc)Error Codes. * EOWNERDEAD: (libc)Error Codes. * EPERM: (libc)Error Codes. * EPFNOSUPPORT: (libc)Error Codes. * EPIPE: (libc)Error Codes. * EPROCLIM: (libc)Error Codes. * EPROCUNAVAIL: (libc)Error Codes. * EPROGMISMATCH: (libc)Error Codes. * EPROGUNAVAIL: (libc)Error Codes. * EPROTO: (libc)Error Codes. * EPROTONOSUPPORT: (libc)Error Codes. * EPROTOTYPE: (libc)Error Codes. * EQUIV_CLASS_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits. * ERANGE: (libc)Error Codes. * EREMCHG: (libc)Error Codes. * EREMOTE: (libc)Error Codes. * EREMOTEIO: (libc)Error Codes. * ERESTART: (libc)Error Codes. * ERFKILL: (libc)Error Codes. * EROFS: (libc)Error Codes. * ERPCMISMATCH: (libc)Error Codes. * ESHUTDOWN: (libc)Error Codes. * ESOCKTNOSUPPORT: (libc)Error Codes. * ESPIPE: (libc)Error Codes. * ESRCH: (libc)Error Codes. * ESRMNT: (libc)Error Codes. * ESTALE: (libc)Error Codes. * ESTRPIPE: (libc)Error Codes. * ETIME: (libc)Error Codes. * ETIMEDOUT: (libc)Error Codes. * ETOOMANYREFS: (libc)Error Codes. * ETXTBSY: (libc)Error Codes. * EUCLEAN: (libc)Error Codes. * EUNATCH: (libc)Error Codes. * EUSERS: (libc)Error Codes. * EWOULDBLOCK: (libc)Error Codes. * EXDEV: (libc)Error Codes. * EXFULL: (libc)Error Codes. * EXIT_FAILURE: (libc)Exit Status. * EXIT_SUCCESS: (libc)Exit Status. * EXPR_NEST_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits. * FD_CLOEXEC: (libc)Descriptor Flags. * FD_CLR: (libc)Waiting for I/O. * FD_ISSET: (libc)Waiting for I/O. * FD_SET: (libc)Waiting for I/O. * FD_SETSIZE: (libc)Waiting for I/O. * FD_ZERO: (libc)Waiting for I/O. * FE_SNANS_ALWAYS_SIGNAL: (libc)Infinity and NaN. * FILENAME_MAX: (libc)Limits for Files. * FLUSHO: (libc)Local Modes. * FOPEN_MAX: (libc)Opening Streams. * FP_ILOGB0: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * FP_ILOGBNAN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * FP_LLOGB0: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * FP_LLOGBNAN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * F_DUPFD: (libc)Duplicating Descriptors. * F_GETFD: (libc)Descriptor Flags. * F_GETFL: (libc)Getting File Status Flags. * F_GETLK: (libc)File Locks. * F_GETOWN: (libc)Interrupt Input. * F_OFD_GETLK: (libc)Open File Description Locks. * F_OFD_SETLK: (libc)Open File Description Locks. * F_OFD_SETLKW: (libc)Open File Description Locks. * F_OK: (libc)Testing File Access. * F_SETFD: (libc)Descriptor Flags. * F_SETFL: (libc)Getting File Status Flags. * F_SETLK: (libc)File Locks. * F_SETLKW: (libc)File Locks. * F_SETOWN: (libc)Interrupt Input. * HUGE_VAL: (libc)Math Error Reporting. * HUGE_VALF: (libc)Math Error Reporting. * HUGE_VALL: (libc)Math Error Reporting. * HUGE_VAL_FN: (libc)Math Error Reporting. * HUGE_VAL_FNx: (libc)Math Error Reporting. * HUPCL: (libc)Control Modes. * I: (libc)Complex Numbers. * ICANON: (libc)Local Modes. * ICRNL: (libc)Input Modes. * IEXTEN: (libc)Local Modes. * IFNAMSIZ: (libc)Interface Naming. * IFTODT: (libc)Directory Entries. * IGNBRK: (libc)Input Modes. * IGNCR: (libc)Input Modes. * IGNPAR: (libc)Input Modes. * IMAXBEL: (libc)Input Modes. * INADDR_ANY: (libc)Host Address Data Type. * INADDR_BROADCAST: (libc)Host Address Data Type. * INADDR_LOOPBACK: (libc)Host Address Data Type. * INADDR_NONE: (libc)Host Address Data Type. * INFINITY: (libc)Infinity and NaN. * INLCR: (libc)Input Modes. * INPCK: (libc)Input Modes. * IPPORT_RESERVED: (libc)Ports. * IPPORT_USERRESERVED: (libc)Ports. * ISIG: (libc)Local Modes. * ISTRIP: (libc)Input Modes. * IXANY: (libc)Input Modes. * IXOFF: (libc)Input Modes. * IXON: (libc)Input Modes. * LINE_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits. * LINK_MAX: (libc)Limits for Files. * L_ctermid: (libc)Identifying the Terminal. * L_cuserid: (libc)Who Logged In. * L_tmpnam: (libc)Temporary Files. * MAXNAMLEN: (libc)Limits for Files. * MAXSYMLINKS: (libc)Symbolic Links. * MAX_CANON: (libc)Limits for Files. * MAX_INPUT: (libc)Limits for Files. * MB_CUR_MAX: (libc)Selecting the Conversion. * MB_LEN_MAX: (libc)Selecting the Conversion. * MDMBUF: (libc)Control Modes. * MSG_DONTROUTE: (libc)Socket Data Options. * MSG_OOB: (libc)Socket Data Options. * MSG_PEEK: (libc)Socket Data Options. * NAME_MAX: (libc)Limits for Files. * NAN: (libc)Infinity and NaN. * NCCS: (libc)Mode Data Types. * NGROUPS_MAX: (libc)General Limits. * NOFLSH: (libc)Local Modes. * NOKERNINFO: (libc)Local Modes. * NSIG: (libc)Standard Signals. * NULL: (libc)Null Pointer Constant. * ONLCR: (libc)Output Modes. * ONOEOT: (libc)Output Modes. * OPEN_MAX: (libc)General Limits. * OPOST: (libc)Output Modes. * OXTABS: (libc)Output Modes. * O_ACCMODE: (libc)Access Modes. * O_APPEND: (libc)Operating Modes. * O_ASYNC: (libc)Operating Modes. * O_CREAT: (libc)Open-time Flags. * O_EXCL: (libc)Open-time Flags. * O_EXEC: (libc)Access Modes. * O_EXLOCK: (libc)Open-time Flags. * O_FSYNC: (libc)Operating Modes. * O_IGNORE_CTTY: (libc)Open-time Flags. * O_NDELAY: (libc)Operating Modes. * O_NOATIME: (libc)Operating Modes. * O_NOCTTY: (libc)Open-time Flags. * O_NOLINK: (libc)Open-time Flags. * O_NONBLOCK: (libc)Open-time Flags. * O_NONBLOCK: (libc)Operating Modes. * O_NOTRANS: (libc)Open-time Flags. * O_RDONLY: (libc)Access Modes. * O_RDWR: (libc)Access Modes. * O_READ: (libc)Access Modes. * O_SHLOCK: (libc)Open-time Flags. * O_SYNC: (libc)Operating Modes. * O_TMPFILE: (libc)Open-time Flags. * O_TRUNC: (libc)Open-time Flags. * O_WRITE: (libc)Access Modes. * O_WRONLY: (libc)Access Modes. * PARENB: (libc)Control Modes. * PARMRK: (libc)Input Modes. * PARODD: (libc)Control Modes. * PATH_MAX: (libc)Limits for Files. * PA_FLAG_MASK: (libc)Parsing a Template String. * PENDIN: (libc)Local Modes. * PF_FILE: (libc)Local Namespace Details. * PF_INET6: (libc)Internet Namespace. * PF_INET: (libc)Internet Namespace. * PF_LOCAL: (libc)Local Namespace Details. * PF_UNIX: (libc)Local Namespace Details. * PIPE_BUF: (libc)Limits for Files. * P_tmpdir: (libc)Temporary Files. * RAND_MAX: (libc)ISO Random. * RE_DUP_MAX: (libc)General Limits. * RLIM_INFINITY: (libc)Limits on Resources. * R_OK: (libc)Testing File Access. * SA_NOCLDSTOP: (libc)Flags for Sigaction. * SA_ONSTACK: (libc)Flags for Sigaction. * SA_RESTART: (libc)Flags for Sigaction. * SEEK_CUR: (libc)File Positioning. * SEEK_END: (libc)File Positioning. * SEEK_SET: (libc)File Positioning. * SIGABRT: (libc)Program Error Signals. * SIGALRM: (libc)Alarm Signals. * SIGBUS: (libc)Program Error Signals. * SIGCHLD: (libc)Job Control Signals. * SIGCLD: (libc)Job Control Signals. * SIGCONT: (libc)Job Control Signals. * SIGEMT: (libc)Program Error Signals. * SIGFPE: (libc)Program Error Signals. * SIGHUP: (libc)Termination Signals. * SIGILL: (libc)Program Error Signals. * SIGINFO: (libc)Miscellaneous Signals. * SIGINT: (libc)Termination Signals. * SIGIO: (libc)Asynchronous I/O Signals. * SIGIOT: (libc)Program Error Signals. * SIGKILL: (libc)Termination Signals. * SIGLOST: (libc)Operation Error Signals. * SIGPIPE: (libc)Operation Error Signals. * SIGPOLL: (libc)Asynchronous I/O Signals. * SIGPROF: (libc)Alarm Signals. * SIGQUIT: (libc)Termination Signals. * SIGSEGV: (libc)Program Error Signals. * SIGSTOP: (libc)Job Control Signals. * SIGSYS: (libc)Program Error Signals. * SIGTERM: (libc)Termination Signals. * SIGTRAP: (libc)Program Error Signals. * SIGTSTP: (libc)Job Control Signals. * SIGTTIN: (libc)Job Control Signals. * SIGTTOU: (libc)Job Control Signals. * SIGURG: (libc)Asynchronous I/O Signals. * SIGUSR1: (libc)Miscellaneous Signals. * SIGUSR2: (libc)Miscellaneous Signals. * SIGVTALRM: (libc)Alarm Signals. * SIGWINCH: (libc)Miscellaneous Signals. * SIGXCPU: (libc)Operation Error Signals. * SIGXFSZ: (libc)Operation Error Signals. * SIG_ERR: (libc)Basic Signal Handling. * SNAN: (libc)Infinity and NaN. * SNANF: (libc)Infinity and NaN. * SNANFN: (libc)Infinity and NaN. * SNANFNx: (libc)Infinity and NaN. * SNANL: (libc)Infinity and NaN. * SOCK_DGRAM: (libc)Communication Styles. * SOCK_RAW: (libc)Communication Styles. * SOCK_RDM: (libc)Communication Styles. * SOCK_SEQPACKET: (libc)Communication Styles. * SOCK_STREAM: (libc)Communication Styles. * SOL_SOCKET: (libc)Socket-Level Options. * SSIZE_MAX: (libc)General Limits. * STREAM_MAX: (libc)General Limits. * SUN_LEN: (libc)Local Namespace Details. * S_IFMT: (libc)Testing File Type. * S_ISBLK: (libc)Testing File Type. * S_ISCHR: (libc)Testing File Type. * S_ISDIR: (libc)Testing File Type. * S_ISFIFO: (libc)Testing File Type. * S_ISLNK: (libc)Testing File Type. * S_ISREG: (libc)Testing File Type. * S_ISSOCK: (libc)Testing File Type. * S_TYPEISMQ: (libc)Testing File Type. * S_TYPEISSEM: (libc)Testing File Type. * S_TYPEISSHM: (libc)Testing File Type. * TMP_MAX: (libc)Temporary Files. * TOSTOP: (libc)Local Modes. * TZNAME_MAX: (libc)General Limits. * VDISCARD: (libc)Other Special. * VDSUSP: (libc)Signal Characters. * VEOF: (libc)Editing Characters. * VEOL2: (libc)Editing Characters. * VEOL: (libc)Editing Characters. * VERASE: (libc)Editing Characters. * VINTR: (libc)Signal Characters. * VKILL: (libc)Editing Characters. * VLNEXT: (libc)Other Special. * VMIN: (libc)Noncanonical Input. * VQUIT: (libc)Signal Characters. * VREPRINT: (libc)Editing Characters. * VSTART: (libc)Start/Stop Characters. * VSTATUS: (libc)Other Special. * VSTOP: (libc)Start/Stop Characters. * VSUSP: (libc)Signal Characters. * VTIME: (libc)Noncanonical Input. * VWERASE: (libc)Editing Characters. * WCHAR_MAX: (libc)Extended Char Intro. * WCHAR_MIN: (libc)Extended Char Intro. * WCOREDUMP: (libc)Process Completion Status. * WEOF: (libc)EOF and Errors. * WEOF: (libc)Extended Char Intro. * WEXITSTATUS: (libc)Process Completion Status. * WIFEXITED: (libc)Process Completion Status. * WIFSIGNALED: (libc)Process Completion Status. * WIFSTOPPED: (libc)Process Completion Status. * WSTOPSIG: (libc)Process Completion Status. * WTERMSIG: (libc)Process Completion Status. * W_OK: (libc)Testing File Access. * X_OK: (libc)Testing File Access. * _Complex_I: (libc)Complex Numbers. * _Exit: (libc)Termination Internals. * _IOFBF: (libc)Controlling Buffering. * _IOLBF: (libc)Controlling Buffering. * _IONBF: (libc)Controlling Buffering. * _Imaginary_I: (libc)Complex Numbers. * _PATH_UTMP: (libc)Manipulating the Database. * _PATH_WTMP: (libc)Manipulating the Database. * _POSIX2_C_DEV: (libc)System Options. * _POSIX2_C_VERSION: (libc)Version Supported. * _POSIX2_FORT_DEV: (libc)System Options. * _POSIX2_FORT_RUN: (libc)System Options. * _POSIX2_LOCALEDEF: (libc)System Options. * _POSIX2_SW_DEV: (libc)System Options. * _POSIX_CHOWN_RESTRICTED: (libc)Options for Files. * _POSIX_JOB_CONTROL: (libc)System Options. * _POSIX_NO_TRUNC: (libc)Options for Files. * _POSIX_SAVED_IDS: (libc)System Options. * _POSIX_VDISABLE: (libc)Options for Files. * _POSIX_VERSION: (libc)Version Supported. * __fbufsize: (libc)Controlling Buffering. * __flbf: (libc)Controlling Buffering. * __fpending: (libc)Controlling Buffering. * __fpurge: (libc)Flushing Buffers. * __freadable: (libc)Opening Streams. * __freading: (libc)Opening Streams. * __fsetlocking: (libc)Streams and Threads. * __fwritable: (libc)Opening Streams. * __fwriting: (libc)Opening Streams. * __gconv_end_fct: (libc)glibc iconv Implementation. * __gconv_fct: (libc)glibc iconv Implementation. * __gconv_init_fct: (libc)glibc iconv Implementation. * __ppc_get_timebase: (libc)PowerPC. * __ppc_get_timebase_freq: (libc)PowerPC. * __ppc_mdoio: (libc)PowerPC. * __ppc_mdoom: (libc)PowerPC. * __ppc_set_ppr_low: (libc)PowerPC. * __ppc_set_ppr_med: (libc)PowerPC. * __ppc_set_ppr_med_high: (libc)PowerPC. * __ppc_set_ppr_med_low: (libc)PowerPC. * __ppc_set_ppr_very_low: (libc)PowerPC. * __ppc_yield: (libc)PowerPC. * __riscv_flush_icache: (libc)RISC-V. * __va_copy: (libc)Argument Macros. * _exit: (libc)Termination Internals. * _flushlbf: (libc)Flushing Buffers. * _tolower: (libc)Case Conversion. * _toupper: (libc)Case Conversion. * a64l: (libc)Encode Binary Data. * abort: (libc)Aborting a Program. * abs: (libc)Absolute Value. * accept: (libc)Accepting Connections. * access: (libc)Testing File Access. * acos: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * acosf: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * acosfN: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * acosfNx: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * acosh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * acoshf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * acoshfN: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * acoshfNx: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * acoshl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * acosl: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * addmntent: (libc)mtab. * addseverity: (libc)Adding Severity Classes. * adjtime: (libc)High-Resolution Calendar. * adjtimex: (libc)High-Resolution Calendar. * aio_cancel64: (libc)Cancel AIO Operations. * aio_cancel: (libc)Cancel AIO Operations. * aio_error64: (libc)Status of AIO Operations. * aio_error: (libc)Status of AIO Operations. * aio_fsync64: (libc)Synchronizing AIO Operations. * aio_fsync: (libc)Synchronizing AIO Operations. * aio_init: (libc)Configuration of AIO. * aio_read64: (libc)Asynchronous Reads/Writes. * aio_read: (libc)Asynchronous Reads/Writes. * aio_return64: (libc)Status of AIO Operations. * aio_return: (libc)Status of AIO Operations. * aio_suspend64: (libc)Synchronizing AIO Operations. * aio_suspend: (libc)Synchronizing AIO Operations. * aio_write64: (libc)Asynchronous Reads/Writes. * aio_write: (libc)Asynchronous Reads/Writes. * alarm: (libc)Setting an Alarm. * aligned_alloc: (libc)Aligned Memory Blocks. * alloca: (libc)Variable Size Automatic. * alphasort64: (libc)Scanning Directory Content. * alphasort: (libc)Scanning Directory Content. * argp_error: (libc)Argp Helper Functions. * argp_failure: (libc)Argp Helper Functions. * argp_help: (libc)Argp Help. * argp_parse: (libc)Argp. * argp_state_help: (libc)Argp Helper Functions. * argp_usage: (libc)Argp Helper Functions. * argz_add: (libc)Argz Functions. * argz_add_sep: (libc)Argz Functions. * argz_append: (libc)Argz Functions. * argz_count: (libc)Argz Functions. * argz_create: (libc)Argz Functions. * argz_create_sep: (libc)Argz Functions. * argz_delete: (libc)Argz Functions. * argz_extract: (libc)Argz Functions. * argz_insert: (libc)Argz Functions. * argz_next: (libc)Argz Functions. * argz_replace: (libc)Argz Functions. * argz_stringify: (libc)Argz Functions. * asctime: (libc)Formatting Calendar Time. * asctime_r: (libc)Formatting Calendar Time. * asin: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * asinf: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * asinfN: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * asinfNx: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * asinh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * asinhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * asinhfN: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * asinhfNx: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * asinhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * asinl: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * asprintf: (libc)Dynamic Output. * assert: (libc)Consistency Checking. * assert_perror: (libc)Consistency Checking. * atan2: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * atan2f: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * atan2fN: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * atan2fNx: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * atan2l: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * atan: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * atanf: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * atanfN: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * atanfNx: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * atanh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * atanhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * atanhfN: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * atanhfNx: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * atanhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * atanl: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * atexit: (libc)Cleanups on Exit. * atof: (libc)Parsing of Floats. * atoi: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * atol: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * atoll: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * backtrace: (libc)Backtraces. * backtrace_symbols: (libc)Backtraces. * backtrace_symbols_fd: (libc)Backtraces. * basename: (libc)Finding Tokens in a String. * basename: (libc)Finding Tokens in a String. * bcmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison. * bcopy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * bind: (libc)Setting Address. * bind_textdomain_codeset: (libc)Charset conversion in gettext. * bindtextdomain: (libc)Locating gettext catalog. * brk: (libc)Resizing the Data Segment. * bsearch: (libc)Array Search Function. * btowc: (libc)Converting a Character. * bzero: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * cabs: (libc)Absolute Value. * cabsf: (libc)Absolute Value. * cabsfN: (libc)Absolute Value. * cabsfNx: (libc)Absolute Value. * cabsl: (libc)Absolute Value. * cacos: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * cacosf: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * cacosfN: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * cacosfNx: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * cacosh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * cacoshf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * cacoshfN: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * cacoshfNx: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * cacoshl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * cacosl: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * call_once: (libc)Call Once. * calloc: (libc)Allocating Cleared Space. * canonicalize: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * canonicalize_file_name: (libc)Symbolic Links. * canonicalizef: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * canonicalizefN: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * canonicalizefNx: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * canonicalizel: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * carg: (libc)Operations on Complex. * cargf: (libc)Operations on Complex. * cargfN: (libc)Operations on Complex. * cargfNx: (libc)Operations on Complex. * cargl: (libc)Operations on Complex. * casin: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * casinf: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * casinfN: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * casinfNx: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * casinh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * casinhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * casinhfN: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * casinhfNx: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * casinhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * casinl: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * catan: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * catanf: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * catanfN: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * catanfNx: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * catanh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * catanhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * catanhfN: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * catanhfNx: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * catanhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * catanl: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions. * catclose: (libc)The catgets Functions. * catgets: (libc)The catgets Functions. * catopen: (libc)The catgets Functions. * cbrt: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * cbrtf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * cbrtfN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * cbrtfNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * cbrtl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * ccos: (libc)Trig Functions. * ccosf: (libc)Trig Functions. * ccosfN: (libc)Trig Functions. * ccosfNx: (libc)Trig Functions. * ccosh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * ccoshf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * ccoshfN: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * ccoshfNx: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * ccoshl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * ccosl: (libc)Trig Functions. * ceil: (libc)Rounding Functions. * ceilf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * ceilfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * ceilfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * ceill: (libc)Rounding Functions. * cexp: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * cexpf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * cexpfN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * cexpfNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * cexpl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * cfgetispeed: (libc)Line Speed. * cfgetospeed: (libc)Line Speed. * cfmakeraw: (libc)Noncanonical Input. * cfsetispeed: (libc)Line Speed. * cfsetospeed: (libc)Line Speed. * cfsetspeed: (libc)Line Speed. * chdir: (libc)Working Directory. * chmod: (libc)Setting Permissions. * chown: (libc)File Owner. * cimag: (libc)Operations on Complex. * cimagf: (libc)Operations on Complex. * cimagfN: (libc)Operations on Complex. * cimagfNx: (libc)Operations on Complex. * cimagl: (libc)Operations on Complex. * clearenv: (libc)Environment Access. * clearerr: (libc)Error Recovery. * clearerr_unlocked: (libc)Error Recovery. * clock: (libc)CPU Time. * clog10: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * clog10f: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * clog10fN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * clog10fNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * clog10l: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * clog: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * clogf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * clogfN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * clogfNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * clogl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * close: (libc)Opening and Closing Files. * closedir: (libc)Reading/Closing Directory. * closelog: (libc)closelog. * cnd_broadcast: (libc)ISO C Condition Variables. * cnd_destroy: (libc)ISO C Condition Variables. * cnd_init: (libc)ISO C Condition Variables. * cnd_signal: (libc)ISO C Condition Variables. * cnd_timedwait: (libc)ISO C Condition Variables. * cnd_wait: (libc)ISO C Condition Variables. * confstr: (libc)String Parameters. * conj: (libc)Operations on Complex. * conjf: (libc)Operations on Complex. * conjfN: (libc)Operations on Complex. * conjfNx: (libc)Operations on Complex. * conjl: (libc)Operations on Complex. * connect: (libc)Connecting. * copy_file_range: (libc)Copying File Data. * copysign: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * copysignf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * copysignfN: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * copysignfNx: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * copysignl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * cos: (libc)Trig Functions. * cosf: (libc)Trig Functions. * cosfN: (libc)Trig Functions. * cosfNx: (libc)Trig Functions. * cosh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * coshf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * coshfN: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * coshfNx: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * coshl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * cosl: (libc)Trig Functions. * cpow: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * cpowf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * cpowfN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * cpowfNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * cpowl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * cproj: (libc)Operations on Complex. * cprojf: (libc)Operations on Complex. * cprojfN: (libc)Operations on Complex. * cprojfNx: (libc)Operations on Complex. * cprojl: (libc)Operations on Complex. * creal: (libc)Operations on Complex. * crealf: (libc)Operations on Complex. * crealfN: (libc)Operations on Complex. * crealfNx: (libc)Operations on Complex. * creall: (libc)Operations on Complex. * creat64: (libc)Opening and Closing Files. * creat: (libc)Opening and Closing Files. * crypt: (libc)Passphrase Storage. * crypt_r: (libc)Passphrase Storage. * csin: (libc)Trig Functions. * csinf: (libc)Trig Functions. * csinfN: (libc)Trig Functions. * csinfNx: (libc)Trig Functions. * csinh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * csinhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * csinhfN: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * csinhfNx: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * csinhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * csinl: (libc)Trig Functions. * csqrt: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * csqrtf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * csqrtfN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * csqrtfNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * csqrtl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * ctan: (libc)Trig Functions. * ctanf: (libc)Trig Functions. * ctanfN: (libc)Trig Functions. * ctanfNx: (libc)Trig Functions. * ctanh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * ctanhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * ctanhfN: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * ctanhfNx: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * ctanhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * ctanl: (libc)Trig Functions. * ctermid: (libc)Identifying the Terminal. * ctime: (libc)Formatting Calendar Time. * ctime_r: (libc)Formatting Calendar Time. * cuserid: (libc)Who Logged In. * daddl: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * dcgettext: (libc)Translation with gettext. * dcngettext: (libc)Advanced gettext functions. * ddivl: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * dgettext: (libc)Translation with gettext. * difftime: (libc)Elapsed Time. * dirfd: (libc)Opening a Directory. * dirname: (libc)Finding Tokens in a String. * div: (libc)Integer Division. * dmull: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * dngettext: (libc)Advanced gettext functions. * drand48: (libc)SVID Random. * drand48_r: (libc)SVID Random. * drem: (libc)Remainder Functions. * dremf: (libc)Remainder Functions. * dreml: (libc)Remainder Functions. * dsubl: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * dup2: (libc)Duplicating Descriptors. * dup: (libc)Duplicating Descriptors. * ecvt: (libc)System V Number Conversion. * ecvt_r: (libc)System V Number Conversion. * endfsent: (libc)fstab. * endgrent: (libc)Scanning All Groups. * endhostent: (libc)Host Names. * endmntent: (libc)mtab. * endnetent: (libc)Networks Database. * endnetgrent: (libc)Lookup Netgroup. * endprotoent: (libc)Protocols Database. * endpwent: (libc)Scanning All Users. * endservent: (libc)Services Database. * endutent: (libc)Manipulating the Database. * endutxent: (libc)XPG Functions. * envz_add: (libc)Envz Functions. * envz_entry: (libc)Envz Functions. * envz_get: (libc)Envz Functions. * envz_merge: (libc)Envz Functions. * envz_remove: (libc)Envz Functions. * envz_strip: (libc)Envz Functions. * erand48: (libc)SVID Random. * erand48_r: (libc)SVID Random. * erf: (libc)Special Functions. * erfc: (libc)Special Functions. * erfcf: (libc)Special Functions. * erfcfN: (libc)Special Functions. * erfcfNx: (libc)Special Functions. * erfcl: (libc)Special Functions. * erff: (libc)Special Functions. * erffN: (libc)Special Functions. * erffNx: (libc)Special Functions. * erfl: (libc)Special Functions. * err: (libc)Error Messages. * errno: (libc)Checking for Errors. * error: (libc)Error Messages. * error_at_line: (libc)Error Messages. * errx: (libc)Error Messages. * execl: (libc)Executing a File. * execle: (libc)Executing a File. * execlp: (libc)Executing a File. * execv: (libc)Executing a File. * execve: (libc)Executing a File. * execvp: (libc)Executing a File. * exit: (libc)Normal Termination. * exp10: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * exp10f: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * exp10fN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * exp10fNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * exp10l: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * exp2: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * exp2f: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * exp2fN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * exp2fNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * exp2l: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * exp: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * expf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * expfN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * expfNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * expl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * explicit_bzero: (libc)Erasing Sensitive Data. * expm1: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * expm1f: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * expm1fN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * expm1fNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * expm1l: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * fMaddfN: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMaddfNx: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMdivfN: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMdivfNx: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMmulfN: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMmulfNx: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMsubfN: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMsubfNx: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMxaddfN: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMxaddfNx: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMxdivfN: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMxdivfNx: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMxmulfN: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMxmulfNx: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMxsubfN: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fMxsubfNx: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fabs: (libc)Absolute Value. * fabsf: (libc)Absolute Value. * fabsfN: (libc)Absolute Value. * fabsfNx: (libc)Absolute Value. * fabsl: (libc)Absolute Value. * fadd: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * faddl: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fchdir: (libc)Working Directory. * fchmod: (libc)Setting Permissions. * fchown: (libc)File Owner. * fclose: (libc)Closing Streams. * fcloseall: (libc)Closing Streams. * fcntl: (libc)Control Operations. * fcvt: (libc)System V Number Conversion. * fcvt_r: (libc)System V Number Conversion. * fdatasync: (libc)Synchronizing I/O. * fdim: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fdimf: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fdimfN: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fdimfNx: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fdiml: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fdiv: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fdivl: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fdopen: (libc)Descriptors and Streams. * fdopendir: (libc)Opening a Directory. * feclearexcept: (libc)Status bit operations. * fedisableexcept: (libc)Control Functions. * feenableexcept: (libc)Control Functions. * fegetenv: (libc)Control Functions. * fegetexcept: (libc)Control Functions. * fegetexceptflag: (libc)Status bit operations. * fegetmode: (libc)Control Functions. * fegetround: (libc)Rounding. * feholdexcept: (libc)Control Functions. * feof: (libc)EOF and Errors. * feof_unlocked: (libc)EOF and Errors. * feraiseexcept: (libc)Status bit operations. * ferror: (libc)EOF and Errors. * ferror_unlocked: (libc)EOF and Errors. * fesetenv: (libc)Control Functions. * fesetexcept: (libc)Status bit operations. * fesetexceptflag: (libc)Status bit operations. * fesetmode: (libc)Control Functions. * fesetround: (libc)Rounding. * fetestexcept: (libc)Status bit operations. * fetestexceptflag: (libc)Status bit operations. * feupdateenv: (libc)Control Functions. * fflush: (libc)Flushing Buffers. * fflush_unlocked: (libc)Flushing Buffers. * fgetc: (libc)Character Input. * fgetc_unlocked: (libc)Character Input. * fgetgrent: (libc)Scanning All Groups. * fgetgrent_r: (libc)Scanning All Groups. * fgetpos64: (libc)Portable Positioning. * fgetpos: (libc)Portable Positioning. * fgetpwent: (libc)Scanning All Users. * fgetpwent_r: (libc)Scanning All Users. * fgets: (libc)Line Input. * fgets_unlocked: (libc)Line Input. * fgetwc: (libc)Character Input. * fgetwc_unlocked: (libc)Character Input. * fgetws: (libc)Line Input. * fgetws_unlocked: (libc)Line Input. * fileno: (libc)Descriptors and Streams. * fileno_unlocked: (libc)Descriptors and Streams. * finite: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * finitef: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * finitel: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * flockfile: (libc)Streams and Threads. * floor: (libc)Rounding Functions. * floorf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * floorfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * floorfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * floorl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * fma: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmaf: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmafN: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmafNx: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmal: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmax: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmaxf: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmaxfN: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmaxfNx: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmaxl: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmaxmag: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmaxmagf: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmaxmagfN: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmaxmagfNx: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmaxmagl: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmemopen: (libc)String Streams. * fmin: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fminf: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fminfN: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fminfNx: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fminl: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fminmag: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fminmagf: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fminmagfN: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fminmagfNx: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fminmagl: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmod: (libc)Remainder Functions. * fmodf: (libc)Remainder Functions. * fmodfN: (libc)Remainder Functions. * fmodfNx: (libc)Remainder Functions. * fmodl: (libc)Remainder Functions. * fmtmsg: (libc)Printing Formatted Messages. * fmul: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fmull: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fnmatch: (libc)Wildcard Matching. * fopen64: (libc)Opening Streams. * fopen: (libc)Opening Streams. * fopencookie: (libc)Streams and Cookies. * fork: (libc)Creating a Process. * forkpty: (libc)Pseudo-Terminal Pairs. * fpathconf: (libc)Pathconf. * fpclassify: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * fprintf: (libc)Formatted Output Functions. * fputc: (libc)Simple Output. * fputc_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output. * fputs: (libc)Simple Output. * fputs_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output. * fputwc: (libc)Simple Output. * fputwc_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output. * fputws: (libc)Simple Output. * fputws_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output. * fread: (libc)Block Input/Output. * fread_unlocked: (libc)Block Input/Output. * free: (libc)Freeing after Malloc. * freopen64: (libc)Opening Streams. * freopen: (libc)Opening Streams. * frexp: (libc)Normalization Functions. * frexpf: (libc)Normalization Functions. * frexpfN: (libc)Normalization Functions. * frexpfNx: (libc)Normalization Functions. * frexpl: (libc)Normalization Functions. * fromfp: (libc)Rounding Functions. * fromfpf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * fromfpfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * fromfpfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * fromfpl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * fromfpx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * fromfpxf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * fromfpxfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * fromfpxfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * fromfpxl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * fscanf: (libc)Formatted Input Functions. * fseek: (libc)File Positioning. * fseeko64: (libc)File Positioning. * fseeko: (libc)File Positioning. * fsetpos64: (libc)Portable Positioning. * fsetpos: (libc)Portable Positioning. * fstat64: (libc)Reading Attributes. * fstat: (libc)Reading Attributes. * fsub: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fsubl: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic. * fsync: (libc)Synchronizing I/O. * ftell: (libc)File Positioning. * ftello64: (libc)File Positioning. * ftello: (libc)File Positioning. * ftruncate64: (libc)File Size. * ftruncate: (libc)File Size. * ftrylockfile: (libc)Streams and Threads. * ftw64: (libc)Working with Directory Trees. * ftw: (libc)Working with Directory Trees. * funlockfile: (libc)Streams and Threads. * futimes: (libc)File Times. * fwide: (libc)Streams and I18N. * fwprintf: (libc)Formatted Output Functions. * fwrite: (libc)Block Input/Output. * fwrite_unlocked: (libc)Block Input/Output. * fwscanf: (libc)Formatted Input Functions. * gamma: (libc)Special Functions. * gammaf: (libc)Special Functions. * gammal: (libc)Special Functions. * gcvt: (libc)System V Number Conversion. * get_avphys_pages: (libc)Query Memory Parameters. * get_current_dir_name: (libc)Working Directory. * get_nprocs: (libc)Processor Resources. * get_nprocs_conf: (libc)Processor Resources. * get_phys_pages: (libc)Query Memory Parameters. * getauxval: (libc)Auxiliary Vector. * getc: (libc)Character Input. * getc_unlocked: (libc)Character Input. * getchar: (libc)Character Input. * getchar_unlocked: (libc)Character Input. * getcontext: (libc)System V contexts. * getcwd: (libc)Working Directory. * getdate: (libc)General Time String Parsing. * getdate_r: (libc)General Time String Parsing. * getdelim: (libc)Line Input. * getdomainnname: (libc)Host Identification. * getegid: (libc)Reading Persona. * getentropy: (libc)Unpredictable Bytes. * getenv: (libc)Environment Access. * geteuid: (libc)Reading Persona. * getfsent: (libc)fstab. * getfsfile: (libc)fstab. * getfsspec: (libc)fstab. * getgid: (libc)Reading Persona. * getgrent: (libc)Scanning All Groups. * getgrent_r: (libc)Scanning All Groups. * getgrgid: (libc)Lookup Group. * getgrgid_r: (libc)Lookup Group. * getgrnam: (libc)Lookup Group. * getgrnam_r: (libc)Lookup Group. * getgrouplist: (libc)Setting Groups. * getgroups: (libc)Reading Persona. * gethostbyaddr: (libc)Host Names. * gethostbyaddr_r: (libc)Host Names. * gethostbyname2: (libc)Host Names. * gethostbyname2_r: (libc)Host Names. * gethostbyname: (libc)Host Names. * gethostbyname_r: (libc)Host Names. * gethostent: (libc)Host Names. * gethostid: (libc)Host Identification. * gethostname: (libc)Host Identification. * getitimer: (libc)Setting an Alarm. * getline: (libc)Line Input. * getloadavg: (libc)Processor Resources. * getlogin: (libc)Who Logged In. * getmntent: (libc)mtab. * getmntent_r: (libc)mtab. * getnetbyaddr: (libc)Networks Database. * getnetbyname: (libc)Networks Database. * getnetent: (libc)Networks Database. * getnetgrent: (libc)Lookup Netgroup. * getnetgrent_r: (libc)Lookup Netgroup. * getopt: (libc)Using Getopt. * getopt_long: (libc)Getopt Long Options. * getopt_long_only: (libc)Getopt Long Options. * getpagesize: (libc)Query Memory Parameters. * getpass: (libc)getpass. * getpayload: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * getpayloadf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * getpayloadfN: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * getpayloadfNx: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * getpayloadl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * getpeername: (libc)Who is Connected. * getpgid: (libc)Process Group Functions. * getpgrp: (libc)Process Group Functions. * getpid: (libc)Process Identification. * getppid: (libc)Process Identification. * getpriority: (libc)Traditional Scheduling Functions. * getprotobyname: (libc)Protocols Database. * getprotobynumber: (libc)Protocols Database. * getprotoent: (libc)Protocols Database. * getpt: (libc)Allocation. * getpwent: (libc)Scanning All Users. * getpwent_r: (libc)Scanning All Users. * getpwnam: (libc)Lookup User. * getpwnam_r: (libc)Lookup User. * getpwuid: (libc)Lookup User. * getpwuid_r: (libc)Lookup User. * getrandom: (libc)Unpredictable Bytes. * getrlimit64: (libc)Limits on Resources. * getrlimit: (libc)Limits on Resources. * getrusage: (libc)Resource Usage. * gets: (libc)Line Input. * getservbyname: (libc)Services Database. * getservbyport: (libc)Services Database. * getservent: (libc)Services Database. * getsid: (libc)Process Group Functions. * getsockname: (libc)Reading Address. * getsockopt: (libc)Socket Option Functions. * getsubopt: (libc)Suboptions. * gettext: (libc)Translation with gettext. * gettimeofday: (libc)High-Resolution Calendar. * getuid: (libc)Reading Persona. * getumask: (libc)Setting Permissions. * getutent: (libc)Manipulating the Database. * getutent_r: (libc)Manipulating the Database. * getutid: (libc)Manipulating the Database. * getutid_r: (libc)Manipulating the Database. * getutline: (libc)Manipulating the Database. * getutline_r: (libc)Manipulating the Database. * getutmp: (libc)XPG Functions. * getutmpx: (libc)XPG Functions. * getutxent: (libc)XPG Functions. * getutxid: (libc)XPG Functions. * getutxline: (libc)XPG Functions. * getw: (libc)Character Input. * getwc: (libc)Character Input. * getwc_unlocked: (libc)Character Input. * getwchar: (libc)Character Input. * getwchar_unlocked: (libc)Character Input. * getwd: (libc)Working Directory. * glob64: (libc)Calling Glob. * glob: (libc)Calling Glob. * globfree64: (libc)More Flags for Globbing. * globfree: (libc)More Flags for Globbing. * gmtime: (libc)Broken-down Time. * gmtime_r: (libc)Broken-down Time. * grantpt: (libc)Allocation. * gsignal: (libc)Signaling Yourself. * gtty: (libc)BSD Terminal Modes. * hasmntopt: (libc)mtab. * hcreate: (libc)Hash Search Function. * hcreate_r: (libc)Hash Search Function. * hdestroy: (libc)Hash Search Function. * hdestroy_r: (libc)Hash Search Function. * hsearch: (libc)Hash Search Function. * hsearch_r: (libc)Hash Search Function. * htonl: (libc)Byte Order. * htons: (libc)Byte Order. * hypot: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * hypotf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * hypotfN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * hypotfNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * hypotl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * iconv: (libc)Generic Conversion Interface. * iconv_close: (libc)Generic Conversion Interface. * iconv_open: (libc)Generic Conversion Interface. * if_freenameindex: (libc)Interface Naming. * if_indextoname: (libc)Interface Naming. * if_nameindex: (libc)Interface Naming. * if_nametoindex: (libc)Interface Naming. * ilogb: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * ilogbf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * ilogbfN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * ilogbfNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * ilogbl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * imaxabs: (libc)Absolute Value. * imaxdiv: (libc)Integer Division. * in6addr_any: (libc)Host Address Data Type. * in6addr_loopback: (libc)Host Address Data Type. * index: (libc)Search Functions. * inet_addr: (libc)Host Address Functions. * inet_aton: (libc)Host Address Functions. * inet_lnaof: (libc)Host Address Functions. * inet_makeaddr: (libc)Host Address Functions. * inet_netof: (libc)Host Address Functions. * inet_network: (libc)Host Address Functions. * inet_ntoa: (libc)Host Address Functions. * inet_ntop: (libc)Host Address Functions. * inet_pton: (libc)Host Address Functions. * initgroups: (libc)Setting Groups. * initstate: (libc)BSD Random. * initstate_r: (libc)BSD Random. * innetgr: (libc)Netgroup Membership. * ioctl: (libc)IOCTLs. * isalnum: (libc)Classification of Characters. * isalpha: (libc)Classification of Characters. * isascii: (libc)Classification of Characters. * isatty: (libc)Is It a Terminal. * isblank: (libc)Classification of Characters. * iscanonical: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * iscntrl: (libc)Classification of Characters. * isdigit: (libc)Classification of Characters. * iseqsig: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * isfinite: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * isgraph: (libc)Classification of Characters. * isgreater: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * isgreaterequal: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * isinf: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * isinff: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * isinfl: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * isless: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * islessequal: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * islessgreater: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * islower: (libc)Classification of Characters. * isnan: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * isnan: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * isnanf: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * isnanl: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * isnormal: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * isprint: (libc)Classification of Characters. * ispunct: (libc)Classification of Characters. * issignaling: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * isspace: (libc)Classification of Characters. * issubnormal: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * isunordered: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * isupper: (libc)Classification of Characters. * iswalnum: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters. * iswalpha: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters. * iswblank: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters. * iswcntrl: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters. * iswctype: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters. * iswdigit: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters. * iswgraph: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters. * iswlower: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters. * iswprint: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters. * iswpunct: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters. * iswspace: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters. * iswupper: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters. * iswxdigit: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters. * isxdigit: (libc)Classification of Characters. * iszero: (libc)Floating Point Classes. * j0: (libc)Special Functions. * j0f: (libc)Special Functions. * j0fN: (libc)Special Functions. * j0fNx: (libc)Special Functions. * j0l: (libc)Special Functions. * j1: (libc)Special Functions. * j1f: (libc)Special Functions. * j1fN: (libc)Special Functions. * j1fNx: (libc)Special Functions. * j1l: (libc)Special Functions. * jn: (libc)Special Functions. * jnf: (libc)Special Functions. * jnfN: (libc)Special Functions. * jnfNx: (libc)Special Functions. * jnl: (libc)Special Functions. * jrand48: (libc)SVID Random. * jrand48_r: (libc)SVID Random. * kill: (libc)Signaling Another Process. * killpg: (libc)Signaling Another Process. * l64a: (libc)Encode Binary Data. * labs: (libc)Absolute Value. * lcong48: (libc)SVID Random. * lcong48_r: (libc)SVID Random. * ldexp: (libc)Normalization Functions. * ldexpf: (libc)Normalization Functions. * ldexpfN: (libc)Normalization Functions. * ldexpfNx: (libc)Normalization Functions. * ldexpl: (libc)Normalization Functions. * ldiv: (libc)Integer Division. * lfind: (libc)Array Search Function. * lgamma: (libc)Special Functions. * lgamma_r: (libc)Special Functions. * lgammaf: (libc)Special Functions. * lgammafN: (libc)Special Functions. * lgammafN_r: (libc)Special Functions. * lgammafNx: (libc)Special Functions. * lgammafNx_r: (libc)Special Functions. * lgammaf_r: (libc)Special Functions. * lgammal: (libc)Special Functions. * lgammal_r: (libc)Special Functions. * link: (libc)Hard Links. * linkat: (libc)Hard Links. * lio_listio64: (libc)Asynchronous Reads/Writes. * lio_listio: (libc)Asynchronous Reads/Writes. * listen: (libc)Listening. * llabs: (libc)Absolute Value. * lldiv: (libc)Integer Division. * llogb: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * llogbf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * llogbfN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * llogbfNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * llogbl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * llrint: (libc)Rounding Functions. * llrintf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * llrintfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * llrintfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * llrintl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * llround: (libc)Rounding Functions. * llroundf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * llroundfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * llroundfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * llroundl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * localeconv: (libc)The Lame Way to Locale Data. * localtime: (libc)Broken-down Time. * localtime_r: (libc)Broken-down Time. * log10: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log10f: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log10fN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log10fNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log10l: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log1p: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log1pf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log1pfN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log1pfNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log1pl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log2: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log2f: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log2fN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log2fNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log2l: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * log: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * logb: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * logbf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * logbfN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * logbfNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * logbl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * logf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * logfN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * logfNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * login: (libc)Logging In and Out. * login_tty: (libc)Logging In and Out. * logl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * logout: (libc)Logging In and Out. * logwtmp: (libc)Logging In and Out. * longjmp: (libc)Non-Local Details. * lrand48: (libc)SVID Random. * lrand48_r: (libc)SVID Random. * lrint: (libc)Rounding Functions. * lrintf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * lrintfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * lrintfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * lrintl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * lround: (libc)Rounding Functions. * lroundf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * lroundfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * lroundfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * lroundl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * lsearch: (libc)Array Search Function. * lseek64: (libc)File Position Primitive. * lseek: (libc)File Position Primitive. * lstat64: (libc)Reading Attributes. * lstat: (libc)Reading Attributes. * lutimes: (libc)File Times. * madvise: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O. * makecontext: (libc)System V contexts. * mallinfo: (libc)Statistics of Malloc. * malloc: (libc)Basic Allocation. * mallopt: (libc)Malloc Tunable Parameters. * mblen: (libc)Non-reentrant Character Conversion. * mbrlen: (libc)Converting a Character. * mbrtowc: (libc)Converting a Character. * mbsinit: (libc)Keeping the state. * mbsnrtowcs: (libc)Converting Strings. * mbsrtowcs: (libc)Converting Strings. * mbstowcs: (libc)Non-reentrant String Conversion. * mbtowc: (libc)Non-reentrant Character Conversion. * mcheck: (libc)Heap Consistency Checking. * memalign: (libc)Aligned Memory Blocks. * memccpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * memchr: (libc)Search Functions. * memcmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison. * memcpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * memfd_create: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O. * memfrob: (libc)Obfuscating Data. * memmem: (libc)Search Functions. * memmove: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * mempcpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * memrchr: (libc)Search Functions. * memset: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * mkdir: (libc)Creating Directories. * mkdtemp: (libc)Temporary Files. * mkfifo: (libc)FIFO Special Files. * mknod: (libc)Making Special Files. * mkstemp: (libc)Temporary Files. * mktemp: (libc)Temporary Files. * mktime: (libc)Broken-down Time. * mlock2: (libc)Page Lock Functions. * mlock: (libc)Page Lock Functions. * mlockall: (libc)Page Lock Functions. * mmap64: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O. * mmap: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O. * modf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * modff: (libc)Rounding Functions. * modffN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * modffNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * modfl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * mount: (libc)Mount-Unmount-Remount. * mprobe: (libc)Heap Consistency Checking. * mprotect: (libc)Memory Protection. * mrand48: (libc)SVID Random. * mrand48_r: (libc)SVID Random. * mremap: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O. * msync: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O. * mtrace: (libc)Tracing malloc. * mtx_destroy: (libc)ISO C Mutexes. * mtx_init: (libc)ISO C Mutexes. * mtx_lock: (libc)ISO C Mutexes. * mtx_timedlock: (libc)ISO C Mutexes. * mtx_trylock: (libc)ISO C Mutexes. * mtx_unlock: (libc)ISO C Mutexes. * munlock: (libc)Page Lock Functions. * munlockall: (libc)Page Lock Functions. * munmap: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O. * muntrace: (libc)Tracing malloc. * nan: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nanf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nanfN: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nanfNx: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nanl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nanosleep: (libc)Sleeping. * nearbyint: (libc)Rounding Functions. * nearbyintf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * nearbyintfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * nearbyintfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * nearbyintl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * nextafter: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nextafterf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nextafterfN: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nextafterfNx: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nextafterl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nextdown: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nextdownf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nextdownfN: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nextdownfNx: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nextdownl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nexttoward: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nexttowardf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nexttowardl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nextup: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nextupf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nextupfN: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nextupfNx: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nextupl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * nftw64: (libc)Working with Directory Trees. * nftw: (libc)Working with Directory Trees. * ngettext: (libc)Advanced gettext functions. * nice: (libc)Traditional Scheduling Functions. * nl_langinfo: (libc)The Elegant and Fast Way. * nrand48: (libc)SVID Random. * nrand48_r: (libc)SVID Random. * ntohl: (libc)Byte Order. * ntohs: (libc)Byte Order. * ntp_adjtime: (libc)High Accuracy Clock. * ntp_gettime: (libc)High Accuracy Clock. * obstack_1grow: (libc)Growing Objects. * obstack_1grow_fast: (libc)Extra Fast Growing. * obstack_alignment_mask: (libc)Obstacks Data Alignment. * obstack_alloc: (libc)Allocation in an Obstack. * obstack_base: (libc)Status of an Obstack. * obstack_blank: (libc)Growing Objects. * obstack_blank_fast: (libc)Extra Fast Growing. * obstack_chunk_size: (libc)Obstack Chunks. * obstack_copy0: (libc)Allocation in an Obstack. * obstack_copy: (libc)Allocation in an Obstack. * obstack_finish: (libc)Growing Objects. * obstack_free: (libc)Freeing Obstack Objects. * obstack_grow0: (libc)Growing Objects. * obstack_grow: (libc)Growing Objects. * obstack_init: (libc)Preparing for Obstacks. * obstack_int_grow: (libc)Growing Objects. * obstack_int_grow_fast: (libc)Extra Fast Growing. * obstack_next_free: (libc)Status of an Obstack. * obstack_object_size: (libc)Growing Objects. * obstack_object_size: (libc)Status of an Obstack. * obstack_printf: (libc)Dynamic Output. * obstack_ptr_grow: (libc)Growing Objects. * obstack_ptr_grow_fast: (libc)Extra Fast Growing. * obstack_room: (libc)Extra Fast Growing. * obstack_vprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output. * offsetof: (libc)Structure Measurement. * on_exit: (libc)Cleanups on Exit. * open64: (libc)Opening and Closing Files. * open: (libc)Opening and Closing Files. * open_memstream: (libc)String Streams. * opendir: (libc)Opening a Directory. * openlog: (libc)openlog. * openpty: (libc)Pseudo-Terminal Pairs. * parse_printf_format: (libc)Parsing a Template String. * pathconf: (libc)Pathconf. * pause: (libc)Using Pause. * pclose: (libc)Pipe to a Subprocess. * perror: (libc)Error Messages. * pipe: (libc)Creating a Pipe. * pkey_alloc: (libc)Memory Protection. * pkey_free: (libc)Memory Protection. * pkey_get: (libc)Memory Protection. * pkey_mprotect: (libc)Memory Protection. * pkey_set: (libc)Memory Protection. * popen: (libc)Pipe to a Subprocess. * posix_fallocate64: (libc)Storage Allocation. * posix_fallocate: (libc)Storage Allocation. * posix_memalign: (libc)Aligned Memory Blocks. * pow: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * powf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * powfN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * powfNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * powl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * pread64: (libc)I/O Primitives. * pread: (libc)I/O Primitives. * preadv2: (libc)Scatter-Gather. * preadv64: (libc)Scatter-Gather. * preadv64v2: (libc)Scatter-Gather. * preadv: (libc)Scatter-Gather. * printf: (libc)Formatted Output Functions. * printf_size: (libc)Predefined Printf Handlers. * printf_size_info: (libc)Predefined Printf Handlers. * psignal: (libc)Signal Messages. * pthread_getattr_default_np: (libc)Default Thread Attributes. * pthread_getspecific: (libc)Thread-specific Data. * pthread_key_create: (libc)Thread-specific Data. * pthread_key_delete: (libc)Thread-specific Data. * pthread_setattr_default_np: (libc)Default Thread Attributes. * pthread_setspecific: (libc)Thread-specific Data. * ptsname: (libc)Allocation. * ptsname_r: (libc)Allocation. * putc: (libc)Simple Output. * putc_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output. * putchar: (libc)Simple Output. * putchar_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output. * putenv: (libc)Environment Access. * putpwent: (libc)Writing a User Entry. * puts: (libc)Simple Output. * pututline: (libc)Manipulating the Database. * pututxline: (libc)XPG Functions. * putw: (libc)Simple Output. * putwc: (libc)Simple Output. * putwc_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output. * putwchar: (libc)Simple Output. * putwchar_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output. * pwrite64: (libc)I/O Primitives. * pwrite: (libc)I/O Primitives. * pwritev2: (libc)Scatter-Gather. * pwritev64: (libc)Scatter-Gather. * pwritev64v2: (libc)Scatter-Gather. * pwritev: (libc)Scatter-Gather. * qecvt: (libc)System V Number Conversion. * qecvt_r: (libc)System V Number Conversion. * qfcvt: (libc)System V Number Conversion. * qfcvt_r: (libc)System V Number Conversion. * qgcvt: (libc)System V Number Conversion. * qsort: (libc)Array Sort Function. * raise: (libc)Signaling Yourself. * rand: (libc)ISO Random. * rand_r: (libc)ISO Random. * random: (libc)BSD Random. * random_r: (libc)BSD Random. * rawmemchr: (libc)Search Functions. * read: (libc)I/O Primitives. * readdir64: (libc)Reading/Closing Directory. * readdir64_r: (libc)Reading/Closing Directory. * readdir: (libc)Reading/Closing Directory. * readdir_r: (libc)Reading/Closing Directory. * readlink: (libc)Symbolic Links. * readv: (libc)Scatter-Gather. * realloc: (libc)Changing Block Size. * reallocarray: (libc)Changing Block Size. * realpath: (libc)Symbolic Links. * recv: (libc)Receiving Data. * recvfrom: (libc)Receiving Datagrams. * recvmsg: (libc)Receiving Datagrams. * regcomp: (libc)POSIX Regexp Compilation. * regerror: (libc)Regexp Cleanup. * regexec: (libc)Matching POSIX Regexps. * regfree: (libc)Regexp Cleanup. * register_printf_function: (libc)Registering New Conversions. * remainder: (libc)Remainder Functions. * remainderf: (libc)Remainder Functions. * remainderfN: (libc)Remainder Functions. * remainderfNx: (libc)Remainder Functions. * remainderl: (libc)Remainder Functions. * remove: (libc)Deleting Files. * rename: (libc)Renaming Files. * rewind: (libc)File Positioning. * rewinddir: (libc)Random Access Directory. * rindex: (libc)Search Functions. * rint: (libc)Rounding Functions. * rintf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * rintfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * rintfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * rintl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * rmdir: (libc)Deleting Files. * round: (libc)Rounding Functions. * roundeven: (libc)Rounding Functions. * roundevenf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * roundevenfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * roundevenfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * roundevenl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * roundf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * roundfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * roundfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * roundl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * rpmatch: (libc)Yes-or-No Questions. * sbrk: (libc)Resizing the Data Segment. * scalb: (libc)Normalization Functions. * scalbf: (libc)Normalization Functions. * scalbl: (libc)Normalization Functions. * scalbln: (libc)Normalization Functions. * scalblnf: (libc)Normalization Functions. * scalblnfN: (libc)Normalization Functions. * scalblnfNx: (libc)Normalization Functions. * scalblnl: (libc)Normalization Functions. * scalbn: (libc)Normalization Functions. * scalbnf: (libc)Normalization Functions. * scalbnfN: (libc)Normalization Functions. * scalbnfNx: (libc)Normalization Functions. * scalbnl: (libc)Normalization Functions. * scandir64: (libc)Scanning Directory Content. * scandir: (libc)Scanning Directory Content. * scanf: (libc)Formatted Input Functions. * sched_get_priority_max: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions. * sched_get_priority_min: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions. * sched_getaffinity: (libc)CPU Affinity. * sched_getparam: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions. * sched_getscheduler: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions. * sched_rr_get_interval: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions. * sched_setaffinity: (libc)CPU Affinity. * sched_setparam: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions. * sched_setscheduler: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions. * sched_yield: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions. * secure_getenv: (libc)Environment Access. * seed48: (libc)SVID Random. * seed48_r: (libc)SVID Random. * seekdir: (libc)Random Access Directory. * select: (libc)Waiting for I/O. * sem_close: (libc)Semaphores. * sem_destroy: (libc)Semaphores. * sem_getvalue: (libc)Semaphores. * sem_init: (libc)Semaphores. * sem_open: (libc)Semaphores. * sem_post: (libc)Semaphores. * sem_timedwait: (libc)Semaphores. * sem_trywait: (libc)Semaphores. * sem_unlink: (libc)Semaphores. * sem_wait: (libc)Semaphores. * semctl: (libc)Semaphores. * semget: (libc)Semaphores. * semop: (libc)Semaphores. * semtimedop: (libc)Semaphores. * send: (libc)Sending Data. * sendmsg: (libc)Receiving Datagrams. * sendto: (libc)Sending Datagrams. * setbuf: (libc)Controlling Buffering. * setbuffer: (libc)Controlling Buffering. * setcontext: (libc)System V contexts. * setdomainname: (libc)Host Identification. * setegid: (libc)Setting Groups. * setenv: (libc)Environment Access. * seteuid: (libc)Setting User ID. * setfsent: (libc)fstab. * setgid: (libc)Setting Groups. * setgrent: (libc)Scanning All Groups. * setgroups: (libc)Setting Groups. * sethostent: (libc)Host Names. * sethostid: (libc)Host Identification. * sethostname: (libc)Host Identification. * setitimer: (libc)Setting an Alarm. * setjmp: (libc)Non-Local Details. * setlinebuf: (libc)Controlling Buffering. * setlocale: (libc)Setting the Locale. * setlogmask: (libc)setlogmask. * setmntent: (libc)mtab. * setnetent: (libc)Networks Database. * setnetgrent: (libc)Lookup Netgroup. * setpayload: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * setpayloadf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * setpayloadfN: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * setpayloadfNx: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * setpayloadl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * setpayloadsig: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * setpayloadsigf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * setpayloadsigfN: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * setpayloadsigfNx: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * setpayloadsigl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * setpgid: (libc)Process Group Functions. * setpgrp: (libc)Process Group Functions. * setpriority: (libc)Traditional Scheduling Functions. * setprotoent: (libc)Protocols Database. * setpwent: (libc)Scanning All Users. * setregid: (libc)Setting Groups. * setreuid: (libc)Setting User ID. * setrlimit64: (libc)Limits on Resources. * setrlimit: (libc)Limits on Resources. * setservent: (libc)Services Database. * setsid: (libc)Process Group Functions. * setsockopt: (libc)Socket Option Functions. * setstate: (libc)BSD Random. * setstate_r: (libc)BSD Random. * settimeofday: (libc)High-Resolution Calendar. * setuid: (libc)Setting User ID. * setutent: (libc)Manipulating the Database. * setutxent: (libc)XPG Functions. * setvbuf: (libc)Controlling Buffering. * shm_open: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O. * shm_unlink: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O. * shutdown: (libc)Closing a Socket. * sigaction: (libc)Advanced Signal Handling. * sigaddset: (libc)Signal Sets. * sigaltstack: (libc)Signal Stack. * sigblock: (libc)BSD Signal Handling. * sigdelset: (libc)Signal Sets. * sigemptyset: (libc)Signal Sets. * sigfillset: (libc)Signal Sets. * siginterrupt: (libc)BSD Signal Handling. * sigismember: (libc)Signal Sets. * siglongjmp: (libc)Non-Local Exits and Signals. * sigmask: (libc)BSD Signal Handling. * signal: (libc)Basic Signal Handling. * signbit: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling. * significand: (libc)Normalization Functions. * significandf: (libc)Normalization Functions. * significandl: (libc)Normalization Functions. * sigpause: (libc)BSD Signal Handling. * sigpending: (libc)Checking for Pending Signals. * sigprocmask: (libc)Process Signal Mask. * sigsetjmp: (libc)Non-Local Exits and Signals. * sigsetmask: (libc)BSD Signal Handling. * sigstack: (libc)Signal Stack. * sigsuspend: (libc)Sigsuspend. * sin: (libc)Trig Functions. * sincos: (libc)Trig Functions. * sincosf: (libc)Trig Functions. * sincosfN: (libc)Trig Functions. * sincosfNx: (libc)Trig Functions. * sincosl: (libc)Trig Functions. * sinf: (libc)Trig Functions. * sinfN: (libc)Trig Functions. * sinfNx: (libc)Trig Functions. * sinh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * sinhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * sinhfN: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * sinhfNx: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * sinhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * sinl: (libc)Trig Functions. * sleep: (libc)Sleeping. * snprintf: (libc)Formatted Output Functions. * socket: (libc)Creating a Socket. * socketpair: (libc)Socket Pairs. * sprintf: (libc)Formatted Output Functions. * sqrt: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * sqrtf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * sqrtfN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * sqrtfNx: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * sqrtl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms. * srand48: (libc)SVID Random. * srand48_r: (libc)SVID Random. * srand: (libc)ISO Random. * srandom: (libc)BSD Random. * srandom_r: (libc)BSD Random. * sscanf: (libc)Formatted Input Functions. * ssignal: (libc)Basic Signal Handling. * stat64: (libc)Reading Attributes. * stat: (libc)Reading Attributes. * stime: (libc)Simple Calendar Time. * stpcpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * stpncpy: (libc)Truncating Strings. * strcasecmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison. * strcasestr: (libc)Search Functions. * strcat: (libc)Concatenating Strings. * strchr: (libc)Search Functions. * strchrnul: (libc)Search Functions. * strcmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison. * strcoll: (libc)Collation Functions. * strcpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * strcspn: (libc)Search Functions. * strdup: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * strdupa: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * strerror: (libc)Error Messages. * strerror_r: (libc)Error Messages. * strfmon: (libc)Formatting Numbers. * strfromd: (libc)Printing of Floats. * strfromf: (libc)Printing of Floats. * strfromfN: (libc)Printing of Floats. * strfromfNx: (libc)Printing of Floats. * strfroml: (libc)Printing of Floats. * strfry: (libc)Shuffling Bytes. * strftime: (libc)Formatting Calendar Time. * strlen: (libc)String Length. * strncasecmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison. * strncat: (libc)Truncating Strings. * strncmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison. * strncpy: (libc)Truncating Strings. * strndup: (libc)Truncating Strings. * strndupa: (libc)Truncating Strings. * strnlen: (libc)String Length. * strpbrk: (libc)Search Functions. * strptime: (libc)Low-Level Time String Parsing. * strrchr: (libc)Search Functions. * strsep: (libc)Finding Tokens in a String. * strsignal: (libc)Signal Messages. * strspn: (libc)Search Functions. * strstr: (libc)Search Functions. * strtod: (libc)Parsing of Floats. * strtof: (libc)Parsing of Floats. * strtofN: (libc)Parsing of Floats. * strtofNx: (libc)Parsing of Floats. * strtoimax: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * strtok: (libc)Finding Tokens in a String. * strtok_r: (libc)Finding Tokens in a String. * strtol: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * strtold: (libc)Parsing of Floats. * strtoll: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * strtoq: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * strtoul: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * strtoull: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * strtoumax: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * strtouq: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * strverscmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison. * strxfrm: (libc)Collation Functions. * stty: (libc)BSD Terminal Modes. * swapcontext: (libc)System V contexts. * swprintf: (libc)Formatted Output Functions. * swscanf: (libc)Formatted Input Functions. * symlink: (libc)Symbolic Links. * sync: (libc)Synchronizing I/O. * syscall: (libc)System Calls. * sysconf: (libc)Sysconf Definition. * sysctl: (libc)System Parameters. * syslog: (libc)syslog; vsyslog. * system: (libc)Running a Command. * sysv_signal: (libc)Basic Signal Handling. * tan: (libc)Trig Functions. * tanf: (libc)Trig Functions. * tanfN: (libc)Trig Functions. * tanfNx: (libc)Trig Functions. * tanh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * tanhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * tanhfN: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * tanhfNx: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * tanhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions. * tanl: (libc)Trig Functions. * tcdrain: (libc)Line Control. * tcflow: (libc)Line Control. * tcflush: (libc)Line Control. * tcgetattr: (libc)Mode Functions. * tcgetpgrp: (libc)Terminal Access Functions. * tcgetsid: (libc)Terminal Access Functions. * tcsendbreak: (libc)Line Control. * tcsetattr: (libc)Mode Functions. * tcsetpgrp: (libc)Terminal Access Functions. * tdelete: (libc)Tree Search Function. * tdestroy: (libc)Tree Search Function. * telldir: (libc)Random Access Directory. * tempnam: (libc)Temporary Files. * textdomain: (libc)Locating gettext catalog. * tfind: (libc)Tree Search Function. * tgamma: (libc)Special Functions. * tgammaf: (libc)Special Functions. * tgammafN: (libc)Special Functions. * tgammafNx: (libc)Special Functions. * tgammal: (libc)Special Functions. * thrd_create: (libc)ISO C Thread Management. * thrd_current: (libc)ISO C Thread Management. * thrd_detach: (libc)ISO C Thread Management. * thrd_equal: (libc)ISO C Thread Management. * thrd_exit: (libc)ISO C Thread Management. * thrd_join: (libc)ISO C Thread Management. * thrd_sleep: (libc)ISO C Thread Management. * thrd_yield: (libc)ISO C Thread Management. * time: (libc)Simple Calendar Time. * timegm: (libc)Broken-down Time. * timelocal: (libc)Broken-down Time. * times: (libc)Processor Time. * tmpfile64: (libc)Temporary Files. * tmpfile: (libc)Temporary Files. * tmpnam: (libc)Temporary Files. * tmpnam_r: (libc)Temporary Files. * toascii: (libc)Case Conversion. * tolower: (libc)Case Conversion. * totalorder: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * totalorderf: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * totalorderfN: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * totalorderfNx: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * totalorderl: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * totalordermag: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * totalordermagf: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * totalordermagfN: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * totalordermagfNx: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * totalordermagl: (libc)FP Comparison Functions. * toupper: (libc)Case Conversion. * towctrans: (libc)Wide Character Case Conversion. * towlower: (libc)Wide Character Case Conversion. * towupper: (libc)Wide Character Case Conversion. * trunc: (libc)Rounding Functions. * truncate64: (libc)File Size. * truncate: (libc)File Size. * truncf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * truncfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * truncfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * truncl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * tsearch: (libc)Tree Search Function. * tss_create: (libc)ISO C Thread-local Storage. * tss_delete: (libc)ISO C Thread-local Storage. * tss_get: (libc)ISO C Thread-local Storage. * tss_set: (libc)ISO C Thread-local Storage. * ttyname: (libc)Is It a Terminal. * ttyname_r: (libc)Is It a Terminal. * twalk: (libc)Tree Search Function. * tzset: (libc)Time Zone Functions. * ufromfp: (libc)Rounding Functions. * ufromfpf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * ufromfpfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * ufromfpfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * ufromfpl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * ufromfpx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * ufromfpxf: (libc)Rounding Functions. * ufromfpxfN: (libc)Rounding Functions. * ufromfpxfNx: (libc)Rounding Functions. * ufromfpxl: (libc)Rounding Functions. * ulimit: (libc)Limits on Resources. * umask: (libc)Setting Permissions. * umount2: (libc)Mount-Unmount-Remount. * umount: (libc)Mount-Unmount-Remount. * uname: (libc)Platform Type. * ungetc: (libc)How Unread. * ungetwc: (libc)How Unread. * unlink: (libc)Deleting Files. * unlockpt: (libc)Allocation. * unsetenv: (libc)Environment Access. * updwtmp: (libc)Manipulating the Database. * utime: (libc)File Times. * utimes: (libc)File Times. * utmpname: (libc)Manipulating the Database. * utmpxname: (libc)XPG Functions. * va_arg: (libc)Argument Macros. * va_copy: (libc)Argument Macros. * va_end: (libc)Argument Macros. * va_start: (libc)Argument Macros. * valloc: (libc)Aligned Memory Blocks. * vasprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output. * verr: (libc)Error Messages. * verrx: (libc)Error Messages. * versionsort64: (libc)Scanning Directory Content. * versionsort: (libc)Scanning Directory Content. * vfork: (libc)Creating a Process. * vfprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output. * vfscanf: (libc)Variable Arguments Input. * vfwprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output. * vfwscanf: (libc)Variable Arguments Input. * vlimit: (libc)Limits on Resources. * vprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output. * vscanf: (libc)Variable Arguments Input. * vsnprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output. * vsprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output. * vsscanf: (libc)Variable Arguments Input. * vswprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output. * vswscanf: (libc)Variable Arguments Input. * vsyslog: (libc)syslog; vsyslog. * vtimes: (libc)Resource Usage. * vwarn: (libc)Error Messages. * vwarnx: (libc)Error Messages. * vwprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output. * vwscanf: (libc)Variable Arguments Input. * wait3: (libc)BSD Wait Functions. * wait4: (libc)Process Completion. * wait: (libc)Process Completion. * waitpid: (libc)Process Completion. * warn: (libc)Error Messages. * warnx: (libc)Error Messages. * wcpcpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * wcpncpy: (libc)Truncating Strings. * wcrtomb: (libc)Converting a Character. * wcscasecmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison. * wcscat: (libc)Concatenating Strings. * wcschr: (libc)Search Functions. * wcschrnul: (libc)Search Functions. * wcscmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison. * wcscoll: (libc)Collation Functions. * wcscpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * wcscspn: (libc)Search Functions. * wcsdup: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * wcsftime: (libc)Formatting Calendar Time. * wcslen: (libc)String Length. * wcsncasecmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison. * wcsncat: (libc)Truncating Strings. * wcsncmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison. * wcsncpy: (libc)Truncating Strings. * wcsnlen: (libc)String Length. * wcsnrtombs: (libc)Converting Strings. * wcspbrk: (libc)Search Functions. * wcsrchr: (libc)Search Functions. * wcsrtombs: (libc)Converting Strings. * wcsspn: (libc)Search Functions. * wcsstr: (libc)Search Functions. * wcstod: (libc)Parsing of Floats. * wcstof: (libc)Parsing of Floats. * wcstofN: (libc)Parsing of Floats. * wcstofNx: (libc)Parsing of Floats. * wcstoimax: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * wcstok: (libc)Finding Tokens in a String. * wcstol: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * wcstold: (libc)Parsing of Floats. * wcstoll: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * wcstombs: (libc)Non-reentrant String Conversion. * wcstoq: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * wcstoul: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * wcstoull: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * wcstoumax: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * wcstouq: (libc)Parsing of Integers. * wcswcs: (libc)Search Functions. * wcsxfrm: (libc)Collation Functions. * wctob: (libc)Converting a Character. * wctomb: (libc)Non-reentrant Character Conversion. * wctrans: (libc)Wide Character Case Conversion. * wctype: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters. * wmemchr: (libc)Search Functions. * wmemcmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison. * wmemcpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * wmemmove: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * wmempcpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * wmemset: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays. * wordexp: (libc)Calling Wordexp. * wordfree: (libc)Calling Wordexp. * wprintf: (libc)Formatted Output Functions. * write: (libc)I/O Primitives. * writev: (libc)Scatter-Gather. * wscanf: (libc)Formatted Input Functions. * y0: (libc)Special Functions. * y0f: (libc)Special Functions. * y0fN: (libc)Special Functions. * y0fNx: (libc)Special Functions. * y0l: (libc)Special Functions. * y1: (libc)Special Functions. * y1f: (libc)Special Functions. * y1fN: (libc)Special Functions. * y1fNx: (libc)Special Functions. * y1l: (libc)Special Functions. * yn: (libc)Special Functions. * ynf: (libc)Special Functions. * ynfN: (libc)Special Functions. * ynfNx: (libc)Special Functions. * ynl: (libc)Special Functions. END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY  File: libc.info, Node: Copying File Data, Next: Memory-mapped I/O, Prev: Scatter-Gather, Up: Low-Level I/O 13.7 Copying data between two files =================================== A special function is provided to copy data between two files on the same file system. The system can optimize such copy operations. This is particularly important on network file systems, where the data would otherwise have to be transferred twice over the network. Note that this function only copies file data, but not metadata such as file permissions or extended attributes. -- Function: ssize_t copy_file_range (int INPUTFD, off64_t *INPUTPOS, int OUTPUTFD, off64_t *OUTPUTPOS, ssize_t LENGTH, unsigned int FLAGS) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function copies up to LENGTH bytes from the file descriptor INPUTFD to the file descriptor OUTPUTFD. The function can operate on both the current file position (like ‘read’ and ‘write’) and an explicit offset (like ‘pread’ and ‘pwrite’). If the INPUTPOS pointer is null, the file position of INPUTFD is used as the starting point of the copy operation, and the file position is advanced during it. If INPUTPOS is not null, then ‘*INPUTPOS’ is used as the starting point of the copy operation, and ‘*INPUTPOS’ is incremented by the number of copied bytes, but the file position remains unchanged. Similar rules apply to OUTPUTFD and OUTPUTPOS for the output file position. The FLAGS argument is currently reserved and must be zero. The ‘copy_file_range’ function returns the number of bytes copied. This can be less than the specified LENGTH in case the input file contains fewer remaining bytes than LENGTH, or if a read or write failure occurs. The return value is zero if the end of the input file is encountered immediately. If no bytes can be copied, to report an error, ‘copy_file_range’ returns the value -1 and sets ‘errno’. The table below lists some of the error conditions for this function. ‘ENOSYS’ The kernel does not implement the required functionality. ‘EISDIR’ At least one of the descriptors INPUTFD or OUTPUTFD refers to a directory. ‘EINVAL’ At least one of the descriptors INPUTFD or OUTPUTFD refers to a non-regular, non-directory file (such as a socket or a FIFO). The input or output positions before are after the copy operations are outside of an implementation-defined limit. The FLAGS argument is not zero. ‘EFBIG’ The new file size would exceed the process file size limit. *Note Limits on Resources::. The input or output positions before are after the copy operations are outside of an implementation-defined limit. This can happen if the file was not opened with large file support (LFS) on 32-bit machines, and the copy operation would create a file which is larger than what ‘off_t’ could represent. ‘EBADF’ The argument INPUTFD is not a valid file descriptor open for reading. The argument OUTPUTFD is not a valid file descriptor open for writing, or OUTPUTFD has been opened with ‘O_APPEND’. In addition, ‘copy_file_range’ can fail with the error codes which are used by ‘read’, ‘pread’, ‘write’, and ‘pwrite’. The ‘copy_file_range’ function is a cancellation point. In case of cancellation, the input location (the file position or the value at ‘*INPUTPOS’) is indeterminate.  File: libc.info, Node: Memory-mapped I/O, Next: Waiting for I/O, Prev: Copying File Data, Up: Low-Level I/O 13.8 Memory-mapped I/O ====================== On modern operating systems, it is possible to “mmap” (pronounced “em-map”) a file to a region of memory. When this is done, the file can be accessed just like an array in the program. This is more efficient than ‘read’ or ‘write’, as only the regions of the file that a program actually accesses are loaded. Accesses to not-yet-loaded parts of the mmapped region are handled in the same way as swapped out pages. Since mmapped pages can be stored back to their file when physical memory is low, it is possible to mmap files orders of magnitude larger than both the physical memory _and_ swap space. The only limit is address space. The theoretical limit is 4GB on a 32-bit machine - however, the actual limit will be smaller since some areas will be reserved for other purposes. If the LFS interface is used the file size on 32-bit systems is not limited to 2GB (offsets are signed which reduces the addressable area of 4GB by half); the full 64-bit are available. Memory mapping only works on entire pages of memory. Thus, addresses for mapping must be page-aligned, and length values will be rounded up. To determine the default size of a page the machine uses one should use: size_t page_size = (size_t) sysconf (_SC_PAGESIZE); On some systems, mappings can use larger page sizes for certain files, and applications can request larger page sizes for anonymous mappings as well (see the ‘MAP_HUGETLB’ flag below). The following functions are declared in ‘sys/mman.h’: -- Function: void * mmap (void *ADDRESS, size_t LENGTH, int PROTECT, int FLAGS, int FILEDES, off_t OFFSET) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘mmap’ function creates a new mapping, connected to bytes (OFFSET) to (OFFSET + LENGTH - 1) in the file open on FILEDES. A new reference for the file specified by FILEDES is created, which is not removed by closing the file. ADDRESS gives a preferred starting address for the mapping. ‘NULL’ expresses no preference. Any previous mapping at that address is automatically removed. The address you give may still be changed, unless you use the ‘MAP_FIXED’ flag. PROTECT contains flags that control what kind of access is permitted. They include ‘PROT_READ’, ‘PROT_WRITE’, and ‘PROT_EXEC’. The special flag ‘PROT_NONE’ reserves a region of address space for future use. The ‘mprotect’ function can be used to change the protection flags. *Note Memory Protection::. FLAGS contains flags that control the nature of the map. One of ‘MAP_SHARED’ or ‘MAP_PRIVATE’ must be specified. They include: ‘MAP_PRIVATE’ This specifies that writes to the region should never be written back to the attached file. Instead, a copy is made for the process, and the region will be swapped normally if memory runs low. No other process will see the changes. Since private mappings effectively revert to ordinary memory when written to, you must have enough virtual memory for a copy of the entire mmapped region if you use this mode with ‘PROT_WRITE’. ‘MAP_SHARED’ This specifies that writes to the region will be written back to the file. Changes made will be shared immediately with other processes mmaping the same file. Note that actual writing may take place at any time. You need to use ‘msync’, described below, if it is important that other processes using conventional I/O get a consistent view of the file. ‘MAP_FIXED’ This forces the system to use the exact mapping address specified in ADDRESS and fail if it can’t. ‘MAP_ANONYMOUS’ ‘MAP_ANON’ This flag tells the system to create an anonymous mapping, not connected to a file. FILEDES and OFFSET are ignored, and the region is initialized with zeros. Anonymous maps are used as the basic primitive to extend the heap on some systems. They are also useful to share data between multiple tasks without creating a file. On some systems using private anonymous mmaps is more efficient than using ‘malloc’ for large blocks. This is not an issue with the GNU C Library, as the included ‘malloc’ automatically uses ‘mmap’ where appropriate. ‘MAP_HUGETLB’ This requests that the system uses an alternative page size which is larger than the default page size for the mapping. For some workloads, increasing the page size for large mappings improves performance because the system needs to handle far fewer pages. For other workloads which require frequent transfer of pages between storage or different nodes, the decreased page granularity may cause performance problems due to the increased page size and larger transfers. In order to create the mapping, the system needs physically contiguous memory of the size of the increased page size. As a result, ‘MAP_HUGETLB’ mappings are affected by memory fragmentation, and their creation can fail even if plenty of memory is available in the system. Not all file systems support mappings with an increased page size. The ‘MAP_HUGETLB’ flag is specific to Linux. ‘mmap’ returns the address of the new mapping, or ‘MAP_FAILED’ for an error. Possible errors include: ‘EINVAL’ Either ADDRESS was unusable (because it is not a multiple of the applicable page size), or inconsistent FLAGS were given. If ‘MAP_HUGETLB’ was specified, the file or system does not support large page sizes. ‘EACCES’ FILEDES was not open for the type of access specified in PROTECT. ‘ENOMEM’ Either there is not enough memory for the operation, or the process is out of address space. ‘ENODEV’ This file is of a type that doesn’t support mapping. ‘ENOEXEC’ The file is on a filesystem that doesn’t support mapping. -- Function: void * mmap64 (void *ADDRESS, size_t LENGTH, int PROTECT, int FLAGS, int FILEDES, off64_t OFFSET) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘mmap64’ function is equivalent to the ‘mmap’ function but the OFFSET parameter is of type ‘off64_t’. On 32-bit systems this allows the file associated with the FILEDES descriptor to be larger than 2GB. FILEDES must be a descriptor returned from a call to ‘open64’ or ‘fopen64’ and ‘freopen64’ where the descriptor is retrieved with ‘fileno’. When the sources are translated with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is actually available under the name ‘mmap’. I.e., the new, extended API using 64 bit file sizes and offsets transparently replaces the old API. -- Function: int munmap (void *ADDR, size_t LENGTH) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. ‘munmap’ removes any memory maps from (ADDR) to (ADDR + LENGTH). LENGTH should be the length of the mapping. It is safe to unmap multiple mappings in one command, or include unmapped space in the range. It is also possible to unmap only part of an existing mapping. However, only entire pages can be removed. If LENGTH is not an even number of pages, it will be rounded up. It returns 0 for success and -1 for an error. One error is possible: ‘EINVAL’ The memory range given was outside the user mmap range or wasn’t page aligned. -- Function: int msync (void *ADDRESS, size_t LENGTH, int FLAGS) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. When using shared mappings, the kernel can write the file at any time before the mapping is removed. To be certain data has actually been written to the file and will be accessible to non-memory-mapped I/O, it is necessary to use this function. It operates on the region ADDRESS to (ADDRESS + LENGTH). It may be used on part of a mapping or multiple mappings, however the region given should not contain any unmapped space. FLAGS can contain some options: ‘MS_SYNC’ This flag makes sure the data is actually written _to disk_. Normally ‘msync’ only makes sure that accesses to a file with conventional I/O reflect the recent changes. ‘MS_ASYNC’ This tells ‘msync’ to begin the synchronization, but not to wait for it to complete. ‘msync’ returns 0 for success and -1 for error. Errors include: ‘EINVAL’ An invalid region was given, or the FLAGS were invalid. ‘EFAULT’ There is no existing mapping in at least part of the given region. -- Function: void * mremap (void *ADDRESS, size_t LENGTH, size_t NEW_LENGTH, int FLAG) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function can be used to change the size of an existing memory area. ADDRESS and LENGTH must cover a region entirely mapped in the same ‘mmap’ statement. A new mapping with the same characteristics will be returned with the length NEW_LENGTH. One option is possible, ‘MREMAP_MAYMOVE’. If it is given in FLAGS, the system may remove the existing mapping and create a new one of the desired length in another location. The address of the resulting mapping is returned, or -1. Possible error codes include: ‘EFAULT’ There is no existing mapping in at least part of the original region, or the region covers two or more distinct mappings. ‘EINVAL’ The address given is misaligned or inappropriate. ‘EAGAIN’ The region has pages locked, and if extended it would exceed the process’s resource limit for locked pages. *Note Limits on Resources::. ‘ENOMEM’ The region is private writable, and insufficient virtual memory is available to extend it. Also, this error will occur if ‘MREMAP_MAYMOVE’ is not given and the extension would collide with another mapped region. This function is only available on a few systems. Except for performing optional optimizations one should not rely on this function. Not all file descriptors may be mapped. Sockets, pipes, and most devices only allow sequential access and do not fit into the mapping abstraction. In addition, some regular files may not be mmapable, and older kernels may not support mapping at all. Thus, programs using ‘mmap’ should have a fallback method to use should it fail. *Note (standards)Mmap::. -- Function: int madvise (void *ADDR, size_t LENGTH, int ADVICE) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function can be used to provide the system with ADVICE about the intended usage patterns of the memory region starting at ADDR and extending LENGTH bytes. The valid BSD values for ADVICE are: ‘MADV_NORMAL’ The region should receive no further special treatment. ‘MADV_RANDOM’ The region will be accessed via random page references. The kernel should page-in the minimal number of pages for each page fault. ‘MADV_SEQUENTIAL’ The region will be accessed via sequential page references. This may cause the kernel to aggressively read-ahead, expecting further sequential references after any page fault within this region. ‘MADV_WILLNEED’ The region will be needed. The pages within this region may be pre-faulted in by the kernel. ‘MADV_DONTNEED’ The region is no longer needed. The kernel may free these pages, causing any changes to the pages to be lost, as well as swapped out pages to be discarded. ‘MADV_HUGEPAGE’ Indicate that it is beneficial to increase the page size for this mapping. This can improve performance for larger mappings because the system needs to handle far fewer pages. However, if parts of the mapping are frequently transferred between storage or different nodes, performance may suffer because individual transfers can become substantially larger due to the increased page size. This flag is specific to Linux. ‘MADV_NOHUGEPAGE’ Undo the effect of a previous ‘MADV_HUGEPAGE’ advice. This flag is specific to Linux. The POSIX names are slightly different, but with the same meanings: ‘POSIX_MADV_NORMAL’ This corresponds with BSD’s ‘MADV_NORMAL’. ‘POSIX_MADV_RANDOM’ This corresponds with BSD’s ‘MADV_RANDOM’. ‘POSIX_MADV_SEQUENTIAL’ This corresponds with BSD’s ‘MADV_SEQUENTIAL’. ‘POSIX_MADV_WILLNEED’ This corresponds with BSD’s ‘MADV_WILLNEED’. ‘POSIX_MADV_DONTNEED’ This corresponds with BSD’s ‘MADV_DONTNEED’. ‘madvise’ returns 0 for success and -1 for error. Errors include: ‘EINVAL’ An invalid region was given, or the ADVICE was invalid. ‘EFAULT’ There is no existing mapping in at least part of the given region. -- Function: int shm_open (const char *NAME, int OFLAG, mode_t MODE) Preliminary: | MT-Safe locale | AS-Unsafe init heap lock | AC-Unsafe lock mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function returns a file descriptor that can be used to allocate shared memory via mmap. Unrelated processes can use same NAME to create or open existing shared memory objects. A NAME argument specifies the shared memory object to be opened. In the GNU C Library it must be a string smaller than ‘NAME_MAX’ bytes starting with an optional slash but containing no other slashes. The semantics of OFLAG and MODE arguments is same as in ‘open’. ‘shm_open’ returns the file descriptor on success or -1 on error. On failure ‘errno’ is set. -- Function: int shm_unlink (const char *NAME) Preliminary: | MT-Safe locale | AS-Unsafe init heap lock | AC-Unsafe lock mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is the inverse of ‘shm_open’ and removes the object with the given NAME previously created by ‘shm_open’. ‘shm_unlink’ returns 0 on success or -1 on error. On failure ‘errno’ is set. -- Function: int memfd_create (const char *NAME, unsigned int FLAGS) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘memfd_create’ function returns a file descriptor which can be used to create memory mappings using the ‘mmap’ function. It is similar to the ‘shm_open’ function in the sense that these mappings are not backed by actual files. However, the descriptor returned by ‘memfd_create’ does not correspond to a named object; the NAME argument is used for debugging purposes only (e.g., will appear in ‘/proc’), and separate invocations of ‘memfd_create’ with the same NAME will not return descriptors for the same region of memory. The descriptor can also be used to create alias mappings within the same process. The descriptor initially refers to a zero-length file. Before mappings can be created which are backed by memory, the file size needs to be increased with the ‘ftruncate’ function. *Note File Size::. The FLAGS argument can be a combination of the following flags: ‘MFD_CLOEXEC’ The descriptor is created with the ‘O_CLOEXEC’ flag. ‘MFD_ALLOW_SEALING’ The descriptor supports the addition of seals using the ‘fcntl’ function. ‘MFD_HUGETLB’ This requests that mappings created using the returned file descriptor use a larger page size. See ‘MAP_HUGETLB’ above for details. This flag is incompatible with ‘MFD_ALLOW_SEALING’. ‘memfd_create’ returns a file descriptor on success, and -1 on failure. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EINVAL’ An invalid combination is specified in FLAGS, or NAME is too long. ‘EFAULT’ The NAME argument does not point to a string. ‘EMFILE’ The operation would exceed the file descriptor limit for this process. ‘ENFILE’ The operation would exceed the system-wide file descriptor limit. ‘ENOMEM’ There is not enough memory for the operation.  File: libc.info, Node: Waiting for I/O, Next: Synchronizing I/O, Prev: Memory-mapped I/O, Up: Low-Level I/O 13.9 Waiting for Input or Output ================================ Sometimes a program needs to accept input on multiple input channels whenever input arrives. For example, some workstations may have devices such as a digitizing tablet, function button box, or dial box that are connected via normal asynchronous serial interfaces; good user interface style requires responding immediately to input on any device. Another example is a program that acts as a server to several other processes via pipes or sockets. You cannot normally use ‘read’ for this purpose, because this blocks the program until input is available on one particular file descriptor; input on other channels won’t wake it up. You could set nonblocking mode and poll each file descriptor in turn, but this is very inefficient. A better solution is to use the ‘select’ function. This blocks the program until input or output is ready on a specified set of file descriptors, or until a timer expires, whichever comes first. This facility is declared in the header file ‘sys/types.h’. In the case of a server socket (*note Listening::), we say that “input” is available when there are pending connections that could be accepted (*note Accepting Connections::). ‘accept’ for server sockets blocks and interacts with ‘select’ just as ‘read’ does for normal input. The file descriptor sets for the ‘select’ function are specified as ‘fd_set’ objects. Here is the description of the data type and some macros for manipulating these objects. -- Data Type: fd_set The ‘fd_set’ data type represents file descriptor sets for the ‘select’ function. It is actually a bit array. -- Macro: int FD_SETSIZE The value of this macro is the maximum number of file descriptors that a ‘fd_set’ object can hold information about. On systems with a fixed maximum number, ‘FD_SETSIZE’ is at least that number. On some systems, including GNU, there is no absolute limit on the number of descriptors open, but this macro still has a constant value which controls the number of bits in an ‘fd_set’; if you get a file descriptor with a value as high as ‘FD_SETSIZE’, you cannot put that descriptor into an ‘fd_set’. -- Macro: void FD_ZERO (fd_set *SET) Preliminary: | MT-Safe race:set | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This macro initializes the file descriptor set SET to be the empty set. -- Macro: void FD_SET (int FILEDES, fd_set *SET) Preliminary: | MT-Safe race:set | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This macro adds FILEDES to the file descriptor set SET. The FILEDES parameter must not have side effects since it is evaluated more than once. -- Macro: void FD_CLR (int FILEDES, fd_set *SET) Preliminary: | MT-Safe race:set | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This macro removes FILEDES from the file descriptor set SET. The FILEDES parameter must not have side effects since it is evaluated more than once. -- Macro: int FD_ISSET (int FILEDES, const fd_set *SET) Preliminary: | MT-Safe race:set | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This macro returns a nonzero value (true) if FILEDES is a member of the file descriptor set SET, and zero (false) otherwise. The FILEDES parameter must not have side effects since it is evaluated more than once. Next, here is the description of the ‘select’ function itself. -- Function: int select (int NFDS, fd_set *READ-FDS, fd_set *WRITE-FDS, fd_set *EXCEPT-FDS, struct timeval *TIMEOUT) Preliminary: | MT-Safe race:read-fds race:write-fds race:except-fds | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘select’ function blocks the calling process until there is activity on any of the specified sets of file descriptors, or until the timeout period has expired. The file descriptors specified by the READ-FDS argument are checked to see if they are ready for reading; the WRITE-FDS file descriptors are checked to see if they are ready for writing; and the EXCEPT-FDS file descriptors are checked for exceptional conditions. You can pass a null pointer for any of these arguments if you are not interested in checking for that kind of condition. A file descriptor is considered ready for reading if a ‘read’ call will not block. This usually includes the read offset being at the end of the file or there is an error to report. A server socket is considered ready for reading if there is a pending connection which can be accepted with ‘accept’; *note Accepting Connections::. A client socket is ready for writing when its connection is fully established; *note Connecting::. “Exceptional conditions” does not mean errors—errors are reported immediately when an erroneous system call is executed, and do not constitute a state of the descriptor. Rather, they include conditions such as the presence of an urgent message on a socket. (*Note Sockets::, for information on urgent messages.) The ‘select’ function checks only the first NFDS file descriptors. The usual thing is to pass ‘FD_SETSIZE’ as the value of this argument. The TIMEOUT specifies the maximum time to wait. If you pass a null pointer for this argument, it means to block indefinitely until one of the file descriptors is ready. Otherwise, you should provide the time in ‘struct timeval’ format; see *note High-Resolution Calendar::. Specify zero as the time (a ‘struct timeval’ containing all zeros) if you want to find out which descriptors are ready without waiting if none are ready. The normal return value from ‘select’ is the total number of ready file descriptors in all of the sets. Each of the argument sets is overwritten with information about the descriptors that are ready for the corresponding operation. Thus, to see if a particular descriptor DESC has input, use ‘FD_ISSET (DESC, READ-FDS)’ after ‘select’ returns. If ‘select’ returns because the timeout period expires, it returns a value of zero. Any signal will cause ‘select’ to return immediately. So if your program uses signals, you can’t rely on ‘select’ to keep waiting for the full time specified. If you want to be sure of waiting for a particular amount of time, you must check for ‘EINTR’ and repeat the ‘select’ with a newly calculated timeout based on the current time. See the example below. See also *note Interrupted Primitives::. If an error occurs, ‘select’ returns ‘-1’ and does not modify the argument file descriptor sets. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EBADF’ One of the file descriptor sets specified an invalid file descriptor. ‘EINTR’ The operation was interrupted by a signal. *Note Interrupted Primitives::. ‘EINVAL’ The TIMEOUT argument is invalid; one of the components is negative or too large. *Portability Note:* The ‘select’ function is a BSD Unix feature. Here is an example showing how you can use ‘select’ to establish a timeout period for reading from a file descriptor. The ‘input_timeout’ function blocks the calling process until input is available on the file descriptor, or until the timeout period expires. #include #include #include #include #include int input_timeout (int filedes, unsigned int seconds) { fd_set set; struct timeval timeout; /* Initialize the file descriptor set. */ FD_ZERO (&set); FD_SET (filedes, &set); /* Initialize the timeout data structure. */ timeout.tv_sec = seconds; timeout.tv_usec = 0; /* ‘select’ returns 0 if timeout, 1 if input available, -1 if error. */ return TEMP_FAILURE_RETRY (select (FD_SETSIZE, &set, NULL, NULL, &timeout)); } int main (void) { fprintf (stderr, "select returned %d.\n", input_timeout (STDIN_FILENO, 5)); return 0; } There is another example showing the use of ‘select’ to multiplex input from multiple sockets in *note Server Example::.  File: libc.info, Node: Synchronizing I/O, Next: Asynchronous I/O, Prev: Waiting for I/O, Up: Low-Level I/O 13.10 Synchronizing I/O operations ================================== In most modern operating systems, the normal I/O operations are not executed synchronously. I.e., even if a ‘write’ system call returns, this does not mean the data is actually written to the media, e.g., the disk. In situations where synchronization points are necessary, you can use special functions which ensure that all operations finish before they return. -- Function: void sync (void) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. A call to this function will not return as long as there is data which has not been written to the device. All dirty buffers in the kernel will be written and so an overall consistent system can be achieved (if no other process in parallel writes data). A prototype for ‘sync’ can be found in ‘unistd.h’. Programs more often want to ensure that data written to a given file is committed, rather than all data in the system. For this, ‘sync’ is overkill. -- Function: int fsync (int FILDES) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘fsync’ function can be used to make sure all data associated with the open file FILDES is written to the device associated with the descriptor. The function call does not return unless all actions have finished. A prototype for ‘fsync’ can be found in ‘unistd.h’. This function is a cancellation point in multi-threaded programs. This is a problem if the thread allocates some resources (like memory, file descriptors, semaphores or whatever) at the time ‘fsync’ is called. If the thread gets canceled these resources stay allocated until the program ends. To avoid this, calls to ‘fsync’ should be protected using cancellation handlers. The return value of the function is zero if no error occurred. Otherwise it is -1 and the global variable ERRNO is set to the following values: ‘EBADF’ The descriptor FILDES is not valid. ‘EINVAL’ No synchronization is possible since the system does not implement this. Sometimes it is not even necessary to write all data associated with a file descriptor. E.g., in database files which do not change in size it is enough to write all the file content data to the device. Meta-information, like the modification time etc., are not that important and leaving such information uncommitted does not prevent a successful recovery of the file in case of a problem. -- Function: int fdatasync (int FILDES) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. When a call to the ‘fdatasync’ function returns, it is ensured that all of the file data is written to the device. For all pending I/O operations, the parts guaranteeing data integrity finished. Not all systems implement the ‘fdatasync’ operation. On systems missing this functionality ‘fdatasync’ is emulated by a call to ‘fsync’ since the performed actions are a superset of those required by ‘fdatasync’. The prototype for ‘fdatasync’ is in ‘unistd.h’. The return value of the function is zero if no error occurred. Otherwise it is -1 and the global variable ERRNO is set to the following values: ‘EBADF’ The descriptor FILDES is not valid. ‘EINVAL’ No synchronization is possible since the system does not implement this.  File: libc.info, Node: Asynchronous I/O, Next: Control Operations, Prev: Synchronizing I/O, Up: Low-Level I/O 13.11 Perform I/O Operations in Parallel ======================================== The POSIX.1b standard defines a new set of I/O operations which can significantly reduce the time an application spends waiting for I/O. The new functions allow a program to initiate one or more I/O operations and then immediately resume normal work while the I/O operations are executed in parallel. This functionality is available if the ‘unistd.h’ file defines the symbol ‘_POSIX_ASYNCHRONOUS_IO’. These functions are part of the library with realtime functions named ‘librt’. They are not actually part of the ‘libc’ binary. The implementation of these functions can be done using support in the kernel (if available) or using an implementation based on threads at userlevel. In the latter case it might be necessary to link applications with the thread library ‘libpthread’ in addition to ‘librt’. All AIO operations operate on files which were opened previously. There might be arbitrarily many operations running for one file. The asynchronous I/O operations are controlled using a data structure named ‘struct aiocb’ (“AIO control block”). It is defined in ‘aio.h’ as follows. -- Data Type: struct aiocb The POSIX.1b standard mandates that the ‘struct aiocb’ structure contains at least the members described in the following table. There might be more elements which are used by the implementation, but depending upon these elements is not portable and is highly deprecated. ‘int aio_fildes’ This element specifies the file descriptor to be used for the operation. It must be a legal descriptor, otherwise the operation will fail. The device on which the file is opened must allow the seek operation. I.e., it is not possible to use any of the AIO operations on devices like terminals where an ‘lseek’ call would lead to an error. ‘off_t aio_offset’ This element specifies the offset in the file at which the operation (input or output) is performed. Since the operations are carried out in arbitrary order and more than one operation for one file descriptor can be started, one cannot expect a current read/write position of the file descriptor. ‘volatile void *aio_buf’ This is a pointer to the buffer with the data to be written or the place where the read data is stored. ‘size_t aio_nbytes’ This element specifies the length of the buffer pointed to by ‘aio_buf’. ‘int aio_reqprio’ If the platform has defined ‘_POSIX_PRIORITIZED_IO’ and ‘_POSIX_PRIORITY_SCHEDULING’, the AIO requests are processed based on the current scheduling priority. The ‘aio_reqprio’ element can then be used to lower the priority of the AIO operation. ‘struct sigevent aio_sigevent’ This element specifies how the calling process is notified once the operation terminates. If the ‘sigev_notify’ element is ‘SIGEV_NONE’, no notification is sent. If it is ‘SIGEV_SIGNAL’, the signal determined by ‘sigev_signo’ is sent. Otherwise, ‘sigev_notify’ must be ‘SIGEV_THREAD’. In this case, a thread is created which starts executing the function pointed to by ‘sigev_notify_function’. ‘int aio_lio_opcode’ This element is only used by the ‘lio_listio’ and ‘lio_listio64’ functions. Since these functions allow an arbitrary number of operations to start at once, and each operation can be input or output (or nothing), the information must be stored in the control block. The possible values are: ‘LIO_READ’ Start a read operation. Read from the file at position ‘aio_offset’ and store the next ‘aio_nbytes’ bytes in the buffer pointed to by ‘aio_buf’. ‘LIO_WRITE’ Start a write operation. Write ‘aio_nbytes’ bytes starting at ‘aio_buf’ into the file starting at position ‘aio_offset’. ‘LIO_NOP’ Do nothing for this control block. This value is useful sometimes when an array of ‘struct aiocb’ values contains holes, i.e., some of the values must not be handled although the whole array is presented to the ‘lio_listio’ function. When the sources are compiled using ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ on a 32 bit machine, this type is in fact ‘struct aiocb64’, since the LFS interface transparently replaces the ‘struct aiocb’ definition. For use with the AIO functions defined in the LFS, there is a similar type defined which replaces the types of the appropriate members with larger types but otherwise is equivalent to ‘struct aiocb’. Particularly, all member names are the same. -- Data Type: struct aiocb64 ‘int aio_fildes’ This element specifies the file descriptor which is used for the operation. It must be a legal descriptor since otherwise the operation fails for obvious reasons. The device on which the file is opened must allow the seek operation. I.e., it is not possible to use any of the AIO operations on devices like terminals where an ‘lseek’ call would lead to an error. ‘off64_t aio_offset’ This element specifies at which offset in the file the operation (input or output) is performed. Since the operation are carried in arbitrary order and more than one operation for one file descriptor can be started, one cannot expect a current read/write position of the file descriptor. ‘volatile void *aio_buf’ This is a pointer to the buffer with the data to be written or the place where the read data is stored. ‘size_t aio_nbytes’ This element specifies the length of the buffer pointed to by ‘aio_buf’. ‘int aio_reqprio’ If for the platform ‘_POSIX_PRIORITIZED_IO’ and ‘_POSIX_PRIORITY_SCHEDULING’ are defined the AIO requests are processed based on the current scheduling priority. The ‘aio_reqprio’ element can then be used to lower the priority of the AIO operation. ‘struct sigevent aio_sigevent’ This element specifies how the calling process is notified once the operation terminates. If the ‘sigev_notify’ element is ‘SIGEV_NONE’ no notification is sent. If it is ‘SIGEV_SIGNAL’, the signal determined by ‘sigev_signo’ is sent. Otherwise, ‘sigev_notify’ must be ‘SIGEV_THREAD’ in which case a thread is created which starts executing the function pointed to by ‘sigev_notify_function’. ‘int aio_lio_opcode’ This element is only used by the ‘lio_listio’ and ‘lio_listio64’ functions. Since these functions allow an arbitrary number of operations to start at once, and since each operation can be input or output (or nothing), the information must be stored in the control block. See the description of ‘struct aiocb’ for a description of the possible values. When the sources are compiled using ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ on a 32 bit machine, this type is available under the name ‘struct aiocb64’, since the LFS transparently replaces the old interface. * Menu: * Asynchronous Reads/Writes:: Asynchronous Read and Write Operations. * Status of AIO Operations:: Getting the Status of AIO Operations. * Synchronizing AIO Operations:: Getting into a consistent state. * Cancel AIO Operations:: Cancellation of AIO Operations. * Configuration of AIO:: How to optimize the AIO implementation.  File: libc.info, Node: Asynchronous Reads/Writes, Next: Status of AIO Operations, Up: Asynchronous I/O 13.11.1 Asynchronous Read and Write Operations ---------------------------------------------- -- Function: int aio_read (struct aiocb *AIOCBP) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock heap | AC-Unsafe lock mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function initiates an asynchronous read operation. It immediately returns after the operation was enqueued or when an error was encountered. The first ‘aiocbp->aio_nbytes’ bytes of the file for which ‘aiocbp->aio_fildes’ is a descriptor are written to the buffer starting at ‘aiocbp->aio_buf’. Reading starts at the absolute position ‘aiocbp->aio_offset’ in the file. If prioritized I/O is supported by the platform the ‘aiocbp->aio_reqprio’ value is used to adjust the priority before the request is actually enqueued. The calling process is notified about the termination of the read request according to the ‘aiocbp->aio_sigevent’ value. When ‘aio_read’ returns, the return value is zero if no error occurred that can be found before the process is enqueued. If such an early error is found, the function returns -1 and sets ‘errno’ to one of the following values: ‘EAGAIN’ The request was not enqueued due to (temporarily) exceeded resource limitations. ‘ENOSYS’ The ‘aio_read’ function is not implemented. ‘EBADF’ The ‘aiocbp->aio_fildes’ descriptor is not valid. This condition need not be recognized before enqueueing the request and so this error might also be signaled asynchronously. ‘EINVAL’ The ‘aiocbp->aio_offset’ or ‘aiocbp->aio_reqpiro’ value is invalid. This condition need not be recognized before enqueueing the request and so this error might also be signaled asynchronously. If ‘aio_read’ returns zero, the current status of the request can be queried using ‘aio_error’ and ‘aio_return’ functions. As long as the value returned by ‘aio_error’ is ‘EINPROGRESS’ the operation has not yet completed. If ‘aio_error’ returns zero, the operation successfully terminated, otherwise the value is to be interpreted as an error code. If the function terminated, the result of the operation can be obtained using a call to ‘aio_return’. The returned value is the same as an equivalent call to ‘read’ would have returned. Possible error codes returned by ‘aio_error’ are: ‘EBADF’ The ‘aiocbp->aio_fildes’ descriptor is not valid. ‘ECANCELED’ The operation was canceled before the operation was finished (*note Cancel AIO Operations::) ‘EINVAL’ The ‘aiocbp->aio_offset’ value is invalid. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is in fact ‘aio_read64’ since the LFS interface transparently replaces the normal implementation. -- Function: int aio_read64 (struct aiocb64 *AIOCBP) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock heap | AC-Unsafe lock mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is similar to the ‘aio_read’ function. The only difference is that on 32 bit machines, the file descriptor should be opened in the large file mode. Internally, ‘aio_read64’ uses functionality equivalent to ‘lseek64’ (*note File Position Primitive::) to position the file descriptor correctly for the reading, as opposed to the ‘lseek’ functionality used in ‘aio_read’. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’, this function is available under the name ‘aio_read’ and so transparently replaces the interface for small files on 32 bit machines. To write data asynchronously to a file, there exists an equivalent pair of functions with a very similar interface. -- Function: int aio_write (struct aiocb *AIOCBP) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock heap | AC-Unsafe lock mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function initiates an asynchronous write operation. The function call immediately returns after the operation was enqueued or if before this happens an error was encountered. The first ‘aiocbp->aio_nbytes’ bytes from the buffer starting at ‘aiocbp->aio_buf’ are written to the file for which ‘aiocbp->aio_fildes’ is a descriptor, starting at the absolute position ‘aiocbp->aio_offset’ in the file. If prioritized I/O is supported by the platform, the ‘aiocbp->aio_reqprio’ value is used to adjust the priority before the request is actually enqueued. The calling process is notified about the termination of the read request according to the ‘aiocbp->aio_sigevent’ value. When ‘aio_write’ returns, the return value is zero if no error occurred that can be found before the process is enqueued. If such an early error is found the function returns -1 and sets ‘errno’ to one of the following values. ‘EAGAIN’ The request was not enqueued due to (temporarily) exceeded resource limitations. ‘ENOSYS’ The ‘aio_write’ function is not implemented. ‘EBADF’ The ‘aiocbp->aio_fildes’ descriptor is not valid. This condition may not be recognized before enqueueing the request, and so this error might also be signaled asynchronously. ‘EINVAL’ The ‘aiocbp->aio_offset’ or ‘aiocbp->aio_reqprio’ value is invalid. This condition may not be recognized before enqueueing the request and so this error might also be signaled asynchronously. In the case ‘aio_write’ returns zero, the current status of the request can be queried using the ‘aio_error’ and ‘aio_return’ functions. As long as the value returned by ‘aio_error’ is ‘EINPROGRESS’ the operation has not yet completed. If ‘aio_error’ returns zero, the operation successfully terminated, otherwise the value is to be interpreted as an error code. If the function terminated, the result of the operation can be obtained using a call to ‘aio_return’. The returned value is the same as an equivalent call to ‘read’ would have returned. Possible error codes returned by ‘aio_error’ are: ‘EBADF’ The ‘aiocbp->aio_fildes’ descriptor is not valid. ‘ECANCELED’ The operation was canceled before the operation was finished. (*note Cancel AIO Operations::) ‘EINVAL’ The ‘aiocbp->aio_offset’ value is invalid. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’, this function is in fact ‘aio_write64’ since the LFS interface transparently replaces the normal implementation. -- Function: int aio_write64 (struct aiocb64 *AIOCBP) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock heap | AC-Unsafe lock mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is similar to the ‘aio_write’ function. The only difference is that on 32 bit machines the file descriptor should be opened in the large file mode. Internally ‘aio_write64’ uses functionality equivalent to ‘lseek64’ (*note File Position Primitive::) to position the file descriptor correctly for the writing, as opposed to the ‘lseek’ functionality used in ‘aio_write’. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’, this function is available under the name ‘aio_write’ and so transparently replaces the interface for small files on 32 bit machines. Besides these functions with the more or less traditional interface, POSIX.1b also defines a function which can initiate more than one operation at a time, and which can handle freely mixed read and write operations. It is therefore similar to a combination of ‘readv’ and ‘writev’. -- Function: int lio_listio (int MODE, struct aiocb *const LIST[], int NENT, struct sigevent *SIG) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock heap | AC-Unsafe lock mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘lio_listio’ function can be used to enqueue an arbitrary number of read and write requests at one time. The requests can all be meant for the same file, all for different files or every solution in between. ‘lio_listio’ gets the NENT requests from the array pointed to by LIST. The operation to be performed is determined by the ‘aio_lio_opcode’ member in each element of LIST. If this field is ‘LIO_READ’ a read operation is enqueued, similar to a call of ‘aio_read’ for this element of the array (except that the way the termination is signalled is different, as we will see below). If the ‘aio_lio_opcode’ member is ‘LIO_WRITE’ a write operation is enqueued. Otherwise the ‘aio_lio_opcode’ must be ‘LIO_NOP’ in which case this element of LIST is simply ignored. This “operation” is useful in situations where one has a fixed array of ‘struct aiocb’ elements from which only a few need to be handled at a time. Another situation is where the ‘lio_listio’ call was canceled before all requests are processed (*note Cancel AIO Operations::) and the remaining requests have to be reissued. The other members of each element of the array pointed to by ‘list’ must have values suitable for the operation as described in the documentation for ‘aio_read’ and ‘aio_write’ above. The MODE argument determines how ‘lio_listio’ behaves after having enqueued all the requests. If MODE is ‘LIO_WAIT’ it waits until all requests terminated. Otherwise MODE must be ‘LIO_NOWAIT’ and in this case the function returns immediately after having enqueued all the requests. In this case the caller gets a notification of the termination of all requests according to the SIG parameter. If SIG is ‘NULL’ no notification is sent. Otherwise a signal is sent or a thread is started, just as described in the description for ‘aio_read’ or ‘aio_write’. If MODE is ‘LIO_WAIT’, the return value of ‘lio_listio’ is 0 when all requests completed successfully. Otherwise the function returns -1 and ‘errno’ is set accordingly. To find out which request or requests failed one has to use the ‘aio_error’ function on all the elements of the array LIST. In case MODE is ‘LIO_NOWAIT’, the function returns 0 if all requests were enqueued correctly. The current state of the requests can be found using ‘aio_error’ and ‘aio_return’ as described above. If ‘lio_listio’ returns -1 in this mode, the global variable ‘errno’ is set accordingly. If a request did not yet terminate, a call to ‘aio_error’ returns ‘EINPROGRESS’. If the value is different, the request is finished and the error value (or 0) is returned and the result of the operation can be retrieved using ‘aio_return’. Possible values for ‘errno’ are: ‘EAGAIN’ The resources necessary to queue all the requests are not available at the moment. The error status for each element of LIST must be checked to determine which request failed. Another reason could be that the system wide limit of AIO requests is exceeded. This cannot be the case for the implementation on GNU systems since no arbitrary limits exist. ‘EINVAL’ The MODE parameter is invalid or NENT is larger than ‘AIO_LISTIO_MAX’. ‘EIO’ One or more of the request’s I/O operations failed. The error status of each request should be checked to determine which one failed. ‘ENOSYS’ The ‘lio_listio’ function is not supported. If the MODE parameter is ‘LIO_NOWAIT’ and the caller cancels a request, the error status for this request returned by ‘aio_error’ is ‘ECANCELED’. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’, this function is in fact ‘lio_listio64’ since the LFS interface transparently replaces the normal implementation. -- Function: int lio_listio64 (int MODE, struct aiocb64 *const LIST[], int NENT, struct sigevent *SIG) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock heap | AC-Unsafe lock mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is similar to the ‘lio_listio’ function. The only difference is that on 32 bit machines, the file descriptor should be opened in the large file mode. Internally, ‘lio_listio64’ uses functionality equivalent to ‘lseek64’ (*note File Position Primitive::) to position the file descriptor correctly for the reading or writing, as opposed to the ‘lseek’ functionality used in ‘lio_listio’. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’, this function is available under the name ‘lio_listio’ and so transparently replaces the interface for small files on 32 bit machines.  File: libc.info, Node: Status of AIO Operations, Next: Synchronizing AIO Operations, Prev: Asynchronous Reads/Writes, Up: Asynchronous I/O 13.11.2 Getting the Status of AIO Operations -------------------------------------------- As already described in the documentation of the functions in the last section, it must be possible to get information about the status of an I/O request. When the operation is performed truly asynchronously (as with ‘aio_read’ and ‘aio_write’ and with ‘lio_listio’ when the mode is ‘LIO_NOWAIT’), one sometimes needs to know whether a specific request already terminated and if so, what the result was. The following two functions allow you to get this kind of information. -- Function: int aio_error (const struct aiocb *AIOCBP) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function determines the error state of the request described by the ‘struct aiocb’ variable pointed to by AIOCBP. If the request has not yet terminated the value returned is always ‘EINPROGRESS’. Once the request has terminated the value ‘aio_error’ returns is either 0 if the request completed successfully or it returns the value which would be stored in the ‘errno’ variable if the request would have been done using ‘read’, ‘write’, or ‘fsync’. The function can return ‘ENOSYS’ if it is not implemented. It could also return ‘EINVAL’ if the AIOCBP parameter does not refer to an asynchronous operation whose return status is not yet known. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is in fact ‘aio_error64’ since the LFS interface transparently replaces the normal implementation. -- Function: int aio_error64 (const struct aiocb64 *AIOCBP) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is similar to ‘aio_error’ with the only difference that the argument is a reference to a variable of type ‘struct aiocb64’. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is available under the name ‘aio_error’ and so transparently replaces the interface for small files on 32 bit machines. -- Function: ssize_t aio_return (struct aiocb *AIOCBP) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function can be used to retrieve the return status of the operation carried out by the request described in the variable pointed to by AIOCBP. As long as the error status of this request as returned by ‘aio_error’ is ‘EINPROGRESS’ the return value of this function is undefined. Once the request is finished this function can be used exactly once to retrieve the return value. Following calls might lead to undefined behavior. The return value itself is the value which would have been returned by the ‘read’, ‘write’, or ‘fsync’ call. The function can return ‘ENOSYS’ if it is not implemented. It could also return ‘EINVAL’ if the AIOCBP parameter does not refer to an asynchronous operation whose return status is not yet known. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is in fact ‘aio_return64’ since the LFS interface transparently replaces the normal implementation. -- Function: ssize_t aio_return64 (struct aiocb64 *AIOCBP) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is similar to ‘aio_return’ with the only difference that the argument is a reference to a variable of type ‘struct aiocb64’. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is available under the name ‘aio_return’ and so transparently replaces the interface for small files on 32 bit machines.  File: libc.info, Node: Synchronizing AIO Operations, Next: Cancel AIO Operations, Prev: Status of AIO Operations, Up: Asynchronous I/O 13.11.3 Getting into a Consistent State --------------------------------------- When dealing with asynchronous operations it is sometimes necessary to get into a consistent state. This would mean for AIO that one wants to know whether a certain request or a group of requests were processed. This could be done by waiting for the notification sent by the system after the operation terminated, but this sometimes would mean wasting resources (mainly computation time). Instead POSIX.1b defines two functions which will help with most kinds of consistency. The ‘aio_fsync’ and ‘aio_fsync64’ functions are only available if the symbol ‘_POSIX_SYNCHRONIZED_IO’ is defined in ‘unistd.h’. -- Function: int aio_fsync (int OP, struct aiocb *AIOCBP) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock heap | AC-Unsafe lock mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. Calling this function forces all I/O operations queued at the time of the function call operating on the file descriptor ‘aiocbp->aio_fildes’ into the synchronized I/O completion state (*note Synchronizing I/O::). The ‘aio_fsync’ function returns immediately but the notification through the method described in ‘aiocbp->aio_sigevent’ will happen only after all requests for this file descriptor have terminated and the file is synchronized. This also means that requests for this very same file descriptor which are queued after the synchronization request are not affected. If OP is ‘O_DSYNC’ the synchronization happens as with a call to ‘fdatasync’. Otherwise OP should be ‘O_SYNC’ and the synchronization happens as with ‘fsync’. As long as the synchronization has not happened, a call to ‘aio_error’ with the reference to the object pointed to by AIOCBP returns ‘EINPROGRESS’. Once the synchronization is done ‘aio_error’ return 0 if the synchronization was not successful. Otherwise the value returned is the value to which the ‘fsync’ or ‘fdatasync’ function would have set the ‘errno’ variable. In this case nothing can be assumed about the consistency of the data written to this file descriptor. The return value of this function is 0 if the request was successfully enqueued. Otherwise the return value is -1 and ‘errno’ is set to one of the following values: ‘EAGAIN’ The request could not be enqueued due to temporary lack of resources. ‘EBADF’ The file descriptor ‘AIOCBP->aio_fildes’ is not valid. ‘EINVAL’ The implementation does not support I/O synchronization or the OP parameter is other than ‘O_DSYNC’ and ‘O_SYNC’. ‘ENOSYS’ This function is not implemented. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is in fact ‘aio_fsync64’ since the LFS interface transparently replaces the normal implementation. -- Function: int aio_fsync64 (int OP, struct aiocb64 *AIOCBP) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock heap | AC-Unsafe lock mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is similar to ‘aio_fsync’ with the only difference that the argument is a reference to a variable of type ‘struct aiocb64’. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is available under the name ‘aio_fsync’ and so transparently replaces the interface for small files on 32 bit machines. Another method of synchronization is to wait until one or more requests of a specific set terminated. This could be achieved by the ‘aio_*’ functions to notify the initiating process about the termination but in some situations this is not the ideal solution. In a program which constantly updates clients somehow connected to the server it is not always the best solution to go round robin since some connections might be slow. On the other hand letting the ‘aio_*’ functions notify the caller might also be not the best solution since whenever the process works on preparing data for a client it makes no sense to be interrupted by a notification since the new client will not be handled before the current client is served. For situations like this ‘aio_suspend’ should be used. -- Function: int aio_suspend (const struct aiocb *const LIST[], int NENT, const struct timespec *TIMEOUT) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock | AC-Unsafe lock | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. When calling this function, the calling thread is suspended until at least one of the requests pointed to by the NENT elements of the array LIST has completed. If any of the requests has already completed at the time ‘aio_suspend’ is called, the function returns immediately. Whether a request has terminated or not is determined by comparing the error status of the request with ‘EINPROGRESS’. If an element of LIST is ‘NULL’, the entry is simply ignored. If no request has finished, the calling process is suspended. If TIMEOUT is ‘NULL’, the process is not woken until a request has finished. If TIMEOUT is not ‘NULL’, the process remains suspended at least as long as specified in TIMEOUT. In this case, ‘aio_suspend’ returns with an error. The return value of the function is 0 if one or more requests from the LIST have terminated. Otherwise the function returns -1 and ‘errno’ is set to one of the following values: ‘EAGAIN’ None of the requests from the LIST completed in the time specified by TIMEOUT. ‘EINTR’ A signal interrupted the ‘aio_suspend’ function. This signal might also be sent by the AIO implementation while signalling the termination of one of the requests. ‘ENOSYS’ The ‘aio_suspend’ function is not implemented. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is in fact ‘aio_suspend64’ since the LFS interface transparently replaces the normal implementation. -- Function: int aio_suspend64 (const struct aiocb64 *const LIST[], int NENT, const struct timespec *TIMEOUT) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock | AC-Unsafe lock | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is similar to ‘aio_suspend’ with the only difference that the argument is a reference to a variable of type ‘struct aiocb64’. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is available under the name ‘aio_suspend’ and so transparently replaces the interface for small files on 32 bit machines.  File: libc.info, Node: Cancel AIO Operations, Next: Configuration of AIO, Prev: Synchronizing AIO Operations, Up: Asynchronous I/O 13.11.4 Cancellation of AIO Operations -------------------------------------- When one or more requests are asynchronously processed, it might be useful in some situations to cancel a selected operation, e.g., if it becomes obvious that the written data is no longer accurate and would have to be overwritten soon. As an example, assume an application, which writes data in files in a situation where new incoming data would have to be written in a file which will be updated by an enqueued request. The POSIX AIO implementation provides such a function, but this function is not capable of forcing the cancellation of the request. It is up to the implementation to decide whether it is possible to cancel the operation or not. Therefore using this function is merely a hint. -- Function: int aio_cancel (int FILDES, struct aiocb *AIOCBP) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock heap | AC-Unsafe lock mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘aio_cancel’ function can be used to cancel one or more outstanding requests. If the AIOCBP parameter is ‘NULL’, the function tries to cancel all of the outstanding requests which would process the file descriptor FILDES (i.e., whose ‘aio_fildes’ member is FILDES). If AIOCBP is not ‘NULL’, ‘aio_cancel’ attempts to cancel the specific request pointed to by AIOCBP. For requests which were successfully canceled, the normal notification about the termination of the request should take place. I.e., depending on the ‘struct sigevent’ object which controls this, nothing happens, a signal is sent or a thread is started. If the request cannot be canceled, it terminates the usual way after performing the operation. After a request is successfully canceled, a call to ‘aio_error’ with a reference to this request as the parameter will return ‘ECANCELED’ and a call to ‘aio_return’ will return -1. If the request wasn’t canceled and is still running the error status is still ‘EINPROGRESS’. The return value of the function is ‘AIO_CANCELED’ if there were requests which haven’t terminated and which were successfully canceled. If there is one or more requests left which couldn’t be canceled, the return value is ‘AIO_NOTCANCELED’. In this case ‘aio_error’ must be used to find out which of the, perhaps multiple, requests (if AIOCBP is ‘NULL’) weren’t successfully canceled. If all requests already terminated at the time ‘aio_cancel’ is called the return value is ‘AIO_ALLDONE’. If an error occurred during the execution of ‘aio_cancel’ the function returns -1 and sets ‘errno’ to one of the following values. ‘EBADF’ The file descriptor FILDES is not valid. ‘ENOSYS’ ‘aio_cancel’ is not implemented. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’, this function is in fact ‘aio_cancel64’ since the LFS interface transparently replaces the normal implementation. -- Function: int aio_cancel64 (int FILDES, struct aiocb64 *AIOCBP) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock heap | AC-Unsafe lock mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is similar to ‘aio_cancel’ with the only difference that the argument is a reference to a variable of type ‘struct aiocb64’. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’, this function is available under the name ‘aio_cancel’ and so transparently replaces the interface for small files on 32 bit machines.  File: libc.info, Node: Configuration of AIO, Prev: Cancel AIO Operations, Up: Asynchronous I/O 13.11.5 How to optimize the AIO implementation ---------------------------------------------- The POSIX standard does not specify how the AIO functions are implemented. They could be system calls, but it is also possible to emulate them at userlevel. At the time of writing, the available implementation is a user-level implementation which uses threads for handling the enqueued requests. While this implementation requires making some decisions about limitations, hard limitations are something best avoided in the GNU C Library. Therefore, the GNU C Library provides a means for tuning the AIO implementation according to the individual use. -- Data Type: struct aioinit This data type is used to pass the configuration or tunable parameters to the implementation. The program has to initialize the members of this struct and pass it to the implementation using the ‘aio_init’ function. ‘int aio_threads’ This member specifies the maximal number of threads which may be used at any one time. ‘int aio_num’ This number provides an estimate on the maximal number of simultaneously enqueued requests. ‘int aio_locks’ Unused. ‘int aio_usedba’ Unused. ‘int aio_debug’ Unused. ‘int aio_numusers’ Unused. ‘int aio_reserved[2]’ Unused. -- Function: void aio_init (const struct aioinit *INIT) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock | AC-Unsafe lock | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function must be called before any other AIO function. Calling it is completely voluntary, as it is only meant to help the AIO implementation perform better. Before calling ‘aio_init’, the members of a variable of type ‘struct aioinit’ must be initialized. Then a reference to this variable is passed as the parameter to ‘aio_init’ which itself may or may not pay attention to the hints. The function has no return value and no error cases are defined. It is an extension which follows a proposal from the SGI implementation in Irix 6. It is not covered by POSIX.1b or Unix98.  File: libc.info, Node: Control Operations, Next: Duplicating Descriptors, Prev: Asynchronous I/O, Up: Low-Level I/O 13.12 Control Operations on Files ================================= This section describes how you can perform various other operations on file descriptors, such as inquiring about or setting flags describing the status of the file descriptor, manipulating record locks, and the like. All of these operations are performed by the function ‘fcntl’. The second argument to the ‘fcntl’ function is a command that specifies which operation to perform. The function and macros that name various flags that are used with it are declared in the header file ‘fcntl.h’. Many of these flags are also used by the ‘open’ function; see *note Opening and Closing Files::. -- Function: int fcntl (int FILEDES, int COMMAND, ...) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘fcntl’ function performs the operation specified by COMMAND on the file descriptor FILEDES. Some commands require additional arguments to be supplied. These additional arguments and the return value and error conditions are given in the detailed descriptions of the individual commands. Briefly, here is a list of what the various commands are. ‘F_DUPFD’ Duplicate the file descriptor (return another file descriptor pointing to the same open file). *Note Duplicating Descriptors::. ‘F_GETFD’ Get flags associated with the file descriptor. *Note Descriptor Flags::. ‘F_SETFD’ Set flags associated with the file descriptor. *Note Descriptor Flags::. ‘F_GETFL’ Get flags associated with the open file. *Note File Status Flags::. ‘F_SETFL’ Set flags associated with the open file. *Note File Status Flags::. ‘F_GETLK’ Test a file lock. *Note File Locks::. ‘F_SETLK’ Set or clear a file lock. *Note File Locks::. ‘F_SETLKW’ Like ‘F_SETLK’, but wait for completion. *Note File Locks::. ‘F_OFD_GETLK’ Test an open file description lock. *Note Open File Description Locks::. Specific to Linux. ‘F_OFD_SETLK’ Set or clear an open file description lock. *Note Open File Description Locks::. Specific to Linux. ‘F_OFD_SETLKW’ Like ‘F_OFD_SETLK’, but block until lock is acquired. *Note Open File Description Locks::. Specific to Linux. ‘F_GETOWN’ Get process or process group ID to receive ‘SIGIO’ signals. *Note Interrupt Input::. ‘F_SETOWN’ Set process or process group ID to receive ‘SIGIO’ signals. *Note Interrupt Input::. This function is a cancellation point in multi-threaded programs for the commands ‘F_SETLKW’ (and the LFS analogous ‘F_SETLKW64’) and ‘F_OFD_SETLKW’. This is a problem if the thread allocates some resources (like memory, file descriptors, semaphores or whatever) at the time ‘fcntl’ is called. If the thread gets canceled these resources stay allocated until the program ends. To avoid this calls to ‘fcntl’ should be protected using cancellation handlers.  File: libc.info, Node: Duplicating Descriptors, Next: Descriptor Flags, Prev: Control Operations, Up: Low-Level I/O 13.13 Duplicating Descriptors ============================= You can “duplicate” a file descriptor, or allocate another file descriptor that refers to the same open file as the original. Duplicate descriptors share one file position and one set of file status flags (*note File Status Flags::), but each has its own set of file descriptor flags (*note Descriptor Flags::). The major use of duplicating a file descriptor is to implement “redirection” of input or output: that is, to change the file or pipe that a particular file descriptor corresponds to. You can perform this operation using the ‘fcntl’ function with the ‘F_DUPFD’ command, but there are also convenient functions ‘dup’ and ‘dup2’ for duplicating descriptors. The ‘fcntl’ function and flags are declared in ‘fcntl.h’, while prototypes for ‘dup’ and ‘dup2’ are in the header file ‘unistd.h’. -- Function: int dup (int OLD) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function copies descriptor OLD to the first available descriptor number (the first number not currently open). It is equivalent to ‘fcntl (OLD, F_DUPFD, 0)’. -- Function: int dup2 (int OLD, int NEW) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function copies the descriptor OLD to descriptor number NEW. If OLD is an invalid descriptor, then ‘dup2’ does nothing; it does not close NEW. Otherwise, the new duplicate of OLD replaces any previous meaning of descriptor NEW, as if NEW were closed first. If OLD and NEW are different numbers, and OLD is a valid descriptor number, then ‘dup2’ is equivalent to: close (NEW); fcntl (OLD, F_DUPFD, NEW) However, ‘dup2’ does this atomically; there is no instant in the middle of calling ‘dup2’ at which NEW is closed and not yet a duplicate of OLD. -- Macro: int F_DUPFD This macro is used as the COMMAND argument to ‘fcntl’, to copy the file descriptor given as the first argument. The form of the call in this case is: fcntl (OLD, F_DUPFD, NEXT-FILEDES) The NEXT-FILEDES argument is of type ‘int’ and specifies that the file descriptor returned should be the next available one greater than or equal to this value. The return value from ‘fcntl’ with this command is normally the value of the new file descriptor. A return value of -1 indicates an error. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this command: ‘EBADF’ The OLD argument is invalid. ‘EINVAL’ The NEXT-FILEDES argument is invalid. ‘EMFILE’ There are no more file descriptors available—your program is already using the maximum. In BSD and GNU, the maximum is controlled by a resource limit that can be changed; *note Limits on Resources::, for more information about the ‘RLIMIT_NOFILE’ limit. ‘ENFILE’ is not a possible error code for ‘dup2’ because ‘dup2’ does not create a new opening of a file; duplicate descriptors do not count toward the limit which ‘ENFILE’ indicates. ‘EMFILE’ is possible because it refers to the limit on distinct descriptor numbers in use in one process. Here is an example showing how to use ‘dup2’ to do redirection. Typically, redirection of the standard streams (like ‘stdin’) is done by a shell or shell-like program before calling one of the ‘exec’ functions (*note Executing a File::) to execute a new program in a child process. When the new program is executed, it creates and initializes the standard streams to point to the corresponding file descriptors, before its ‘main’ function is invoked. So, to redirect standard input to a file, the shell could do something like: pid = fork (); if (pid == 0) { char *filename; char *program; int file; ... file = TEMP_FAILURE_RETRY (open (filename, O_RDONLY)); dup2 (file, STDIN_FILENO); TEMP_FAILURE_RETRY (close (file)); execv (program, NULL); } There is also a more detailed example showing how to implement redirection in the context of a pipeline of processes in *note Launching Jobs::.  File: libc.info, Node: Descriptor Flags, Next: File Status Flags, Prev: Duplicating Descriptors, Up: Low-Level I/O 13.14 File Descriptor Flags =========================== “File descriptor flags” are miscellaneous attributes of a file descriptor. These flags are associated with particular file descriptors, so that if you have created duplicate file descriptors from a single opening of a file, each descriptor has its own set of flags. Currently there is just one file descriptor flag: ‘FD_CLOEXEC’, which causes the descriptor to be closed if you use any of the ‘exec...’ functions (*note Executing a File::). The symbols in this section are defined in the header file ‘fcntl.h’. -- Macro: int F_GETFD This macro is used as the COMMAND argument to ‘fcntl’, to specify that it should return the file descriptor flags associated with the FILEDES argument. The normal return value from ‘fcntl’ with this command is a nonnegative number which can be interpreted as the bitwise OR of the individual flags (except that currently there is only one flag to use). In case of an error, ‘fcntl’ returns -1. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this command: ‘EBADF’ The FILEDES argument is invalid. -- Macro: int F_SETFD This macro is used as the COMMAND argument to ‘fcntl’, to specify that it should set the file descriptor flags associated with the FILEDES argument. This requires a third ‘int’ argument to specify the new flags, so the form of the call is: fcntl (FILEDES, F_SETFD, NEW-FLAGS) The normal return value from ‘fcntl’ with this command is an unspecified value other than -1, which indicates an error. The flags and error conditions are the same as for the ‘F_GETFD’ command. The following macro is defined for use as a file descriptor flag with the ‘fcntl’ function. The value is an integer constant usable as a bit mask value. -- Macro: int FD_CLOEXEC This flag specifies that the file descriptor should be closed when an ‘exec’ function is invoked; see *note Executing a File::. When a file descriptor is allocated (as with ‘open’ or ‘dup’), this bit is initially cleared on the new file descriptor, meaning that descriptor will survive into the new program after ‘exec’. If you want to modify the file descriptor flags, you should get the current flags with ‘F_GETFD’ and modify the value. Don’t assume that the flags listed here are the only ones that are implemented; your program may be run years from now and more flags may exist then. For example, here is a function to set or clear the flag ‘FD_CLOEXEC’ without altering any other flags: /* Set the ‘FD_CLOEXEC’ flag of DESC if VALUE is nonzero, or clear the flag if VALUE is 0. Return 0 on success, or -1 on error with ‘errno’ set. */ int set_cloexec_flag (int desc, int value) { int oldflags = fcntl (desc, F_GETFD, 0); /* If reading the flags failed, return error indication now. */ if (oldflags < 0) return oldflags; /* Set just the flag we want to set. */ if (value != 0) oldflags |= FD_CLOEXEC; else oldflags &= ~FD_CLOEXEC; /* Store modified flag word in the descriptor. */ return fcntl (desc, F_SETFD, oldflags); }  File: libc.info, Node: File Status Flags, Next: File Locks, Prev: Descriptor Flags, Up: Low-Level I/O 13.15 File Status Flags ======================= “File status flags” are used to specify attributes of the opening of a file. Unlike the file descriptor flags discussed in *note Descriptor Flags::, the file status flags are shared by duplicated file descriptors resulting from a single opening of the file. The file status flags are specified with the FLAGS argument to ‘open’; *note Opening and Closing Files::. File status flags fall into three categories, which are described in the following sections. • *note Access Modes::, specify what type of access is allowed to the file: reading, writing, or both. They are set by ‘open’ and are returned by ‘fcntl’, but cannot be changed. • *note Open-time Flags::, control details of what ‘open’ will do. These flags are not preserved after the ‘open’ call. • *note Operating Modes::, affect how operations such as ‘read’ and ‘write’ are done. They are set by ‘open’, and can be fetched or changed with ‘fcntl’. The symbols in this section are defined in the header file ‘fcntl.h’. * Menu: * Access Modes:: Whether the descriptor can read or write. * Open-time Flags:: Details of ‘open’. * Operating Modes:: Special modes to control I/O operations. * Getting File Status Flags:: Fetching and changing these flags.  File: libc.info, Node: Access Modes, Next: Open-time Flags, Up: File Status Flags 13.15.1 File Access Modes ------------------------- The file access modes allow a file descriptor to be used for reading, writing, or both. (On GNU/Hurd systems, they can also allow none of these, and allow execution of the file as a program.) The access modes are chosen when the file is opened, and never change. -- Macro: int O_RDONLY Open the file for read access. -- Macro: int O_WRONLY Open the file for write access. -- Macro: int O_RDWR Open the file for both reading and writing. On GNU/Hurd systems (and not on other systems), ‘O_RDONLY’ and ‘O_WRONLY’ are independent bits that can be bitwise-ORed together, and it is valid for either bit to be set or clear. This means that ‘O_RDWR’ is the same as ‘O_RDONLY|O_WRONLY’. A file access mode of zero is permissible; it allows no operations that do input or output to the file, but does allow other operations such as ‘fchmod’. On GNU/Hurd systems, since “read-only” or “write-only” is a misnomer, ‘fcntl.h’ defines additional names for the file access modes. These names are preferred when writing GNU-specific code. But most programs will want to be portable to other POSIX.1 systems and should use the POSIX.1 names above instead. -- Macro: int O_READ Open the file for reading. Same as ‘O_RDONLY’; only defined on GNU. -- Macro: int O_WRITE Open the file for writing. Same as ‘O_WRONLY’; only defined on GNU. -- Macro: int O_EXEC Open the file for executing. Only defined on GNU. To determine the file access mode with ‘fcntl’, you must extract the access mode bits from the retrieved file status flags. On GNU/Hurd systems, you can just test the ‘O_READ’ and ‘O_WRITE’ bits in the flags word. But in other POSIX.1 systems, reading and writing access modes are not stored as distinct bit flags. The portable way to extract the file access mode bits is with ‘O_ACCMODE’. -- Macro: int O_ACCMODE This macro stands for a mask that can be bitwise-ANDed with the file status flag value to produce a value representing the file access mode. The mode will be ‘O_RDONLY’, ‘O_WRONLY’, or ‘O_RDWR’. (On GNU/Hurd systems it could also be zero, and it never includes the ‘O_EXEC’ bit.)  File: libc.info, Node: Open-time Flags, Next: Operating Modes, Prev: Access Modes, Up: File Status Flags 13.15.2 Open-time Flags ----------------------- The open-time flags specify options affecting how ‘open’ will behave. These options are not preserved once the file is open. The exception to this is ‘O_NONBLOCK’, which is also an I/O operating mode and so it _is_ saved. *Note Opening and Closing Files::, for how to call ‘open’. There are two sorts of options specified by open-time flags. • “File name translation flags” affect how ‘open’ looks up the file name to locate the file, and whether the file can be created. • “Open-time action flags” specify extra operations that ‘open’ will perform on the file once it is open. Here are the file name translation flags. -- Macro: int O_CREAT If set, the file will be created if it doesn’t already exist. -- Macro: int O_EXCL If both ‘O_CREAT’ and ‘O_EXCL’ are set, then ‘open’ fails if the specified file already exists. This is guaranteed to never clobber an existing file. The ‘O_EXCL’ flag has a special meaning in combination with ‘O_TMPFILE’; see below. -- Macro: int O_TMPFILE If this flag is specified, functions in the ‘open’ family create an unnamed temporary file. In this case, the pathname argument to the ‘open’ family of functions (*note Opening and Closing Files::) is interpreted as the directory in which the temporary file is created (thus determining the file system which provides the storage for the file). The ‘O_TMPFILE’ flag must be combined with ‘O_WRONLY’ or ‘O_RDWR’, and the MODE argument is required. The temporary file can later be given a name using ‘linkat’, turning it into a regular file. This allows the atomic creation of a file with the specific file attributes (mode and extended attributes) and file contents. If, for security reasons, it is not desirable that a name can be given to the file, the ‘O_EXCL’ flag can be specified along with ‘O_TMPFILE’. Not all kernels support this open flag. If this flag is unsupported, an attempt to create an unnamed temporary file fails with an error of ‘EINVAL’. If the underlying file system does not support the ‘O_TMPFILE’ flag, an ‘EOPNOTSUPP’ error is the result. The ‘O_TMPFILE’ flag is a GNU extension. -- Macro: int O_NONBLOCK This prevents ‘open’ from blocking for a “long time” to open the file. This is only meaningful for some kinds of files, usually devices such as serial ports; when it is not meaningful, it is harmless and ignored. Often, opening a port to a modem blocks until the modem reports carrier detection; if ‘O_NONBLOCK’ is specified, ‘open’ will return immediately without a carrier. Note that the ‘O_NONBLOCK’ flag is overloaded as both an I/O operating mode and a file name translation flag. This means that specifying ‘O_NONBLOCK’ in ‘open’ also sets nonblocking I/O mode; *note Operating Modes::. To open the file without blocking but do normal I/O that blocks, you must call ‘open’ with ‘O_NONBLOCK’ set and then call ‘fcntl’ to turn the bit off. -- Macro: int O_NOCTTY If the named file is a terminal device, don’t make it the controlling terminal for the process. *Note Job Control::, for information about what it means to be the controlling terminal. On GNU/Hurd systems and 4.4 BSD, opening a file never makes it the controlling terminal and ‘O_NOCTTY’ is zero. However, GNU/Linux systems and some other systems use a nonzero value for ‘O_NOCTTY’ and set the controlling terminal when you open a file that is a terminal device; so to be portable, use ‘O_NOCTTY’ when it is important to avoid this. The following three file name translation flags exist only on GNU/Hurd systems. -- Macro: int O_IGNORE_CTTY Do not recognize the named file as the controlling terminal, even if it refers to the process’s existing controlling terminal device. Operations on the new file descriptor will never induce job control signals. *Note Job Control::. -- Macro: int O_NOLINK If the named file is a symbolic link, open the link itself instead of the file it refers to. (‘fstat’ on the new file descriptor will return the information returned by ‘lstat’ on the link’s name.) -- Macro: int O_NOTRANS If the named file is specially translated, do not invoke the translator. Open the bare file the translator itself sees. The open-time action flags tell ‘open’ to do additional operations which are not really related to opening the file. The reason to do them as part of ‘open’ instead of in separate calls is that ‘open’ can do them atomically. -- Macro: int O_TRUNC Truncate the file to zero length. This option is only useful for regular files, not special files such as directories or FIFOs. POSIX.1 requires that you open the file for writing to use ‘O_TRUNC’. In BSD and GNU you must have permission to write the file to truncate it, but you need not open for write access. This is the only open-time action flag specified by POSIX.1. There is no good reason for truncation to be done by ‘open’, instead of by calling ‘ftruncate’ afterwards. The ‘O_TRUNC’ flag existed in Unix before ‘ftruncate’ was invented, and is retained for backward compatibility. The remaining operating modes are BSD extensions. They exist only on some systems. On other systems, these macros are not defined. -- Macro: int O_SHLOCK Acquire a shared lock on the file, as with ‘flock’. *Note File Locks::. If ‘O_CREAT’ is specified, the locking is done atomically when creating the file. You are guaranteed that no other process will get the lock on the new file first. -- Macro: int O_EXLOCK Acquire an exclusive lock on the file, as with ‘flock’. *Note File Locks::. This is atomic like ‘O_SHLOCK’.  File: libc.info, Node: Operating Modes, Next: Getting File Status Flags, Prev: Open-time Flags, Up: File Status Flags 13.15.3 I/O Operating Modes --------------------------- The operating modes affect how input and output operations using a file descriptor work. These flags are set by ‘open’ and can be fetched and changed with ‘fcntl’. -- Macro: int O_APPEND The bit that enables append mode for the file. If set, then all ‘write’ operations write the data at the end of the file, extending it, regardless of the current file position. This is the only reliable way to append to a file. In append mode, you are guaranteed that the data you write will always go to the current end of the file, regardless of other processes writing to the file. Conversely, if you simply set the file position to the end of file and write, then another process can extend the file after you set the file position but before you write, resulting in your data appearing someplace before the real end of file. -- Macro: int O_NONBLOCK The bit that enables nonblocking mode for the file. If this bit is set, ‘read’ requests on the file can return immediately with a failure status if there is no input immediately available, instead of blocking. Likewise, ‘write’ requests can also return immediately with a failure status if the output can’t be written immediately. Note that the ‘O_NONBLOCK’ flag is overloaded as both an I/O operating mode and a file name translation flag; *note Open-time Flags::. -- Macro: int O_NDELAY This is an obsolete name for ‘O_NONBLOCK’, provided for compatibility with BSD. It is not defined by the POSIX.1 standard. The remaining operating modes are BSD and GNU extensions. They exist only on some systems. On other systems, these macros are not defined. -- Macro: int O_ASYNC The bit that enables asynchronous input mode. If set, then ‘SIGIO’ signals will be generated when input is available. *Note Interrupt Input::. Asynchronous input mode is a BSD feature. -- Macro: int O_FSYNC The bit that enables synchronous writing for the file. If set, each ‘write’ call will make sure the data is reliably stored on disk before returning. Synchronous writing is a BSD feature. -- Macro: int O_SYNC This is another name for ‘O_FSYNC’. They have the same value. -- Macro: int O_NOATIME If this bit is set, ‘read’ will not update the access time of the file. *Note File Times::. This is used by programs that do backups, so that backing a file up does not count as reading it. Only the owner of the file or the superuser may use this bit. This is a GNU extension.  File: libc.info, Node: Getting File Status Flags, Prev: Operating Modes, Up: File Status Flags 13.15.4 Getting and Setting File Status Flags --------------------------------------------- The ‘fcntl’ function can fetch or change file status flags. -- Macro: int F_GETFL This macro is used as the COMMAND argument to ‘fcntl’, to read the file status flags for the open file with descriptor FILEDES. The normal return value from ‘fcntl’ with this command is a nonnegative number which can be interpreted as the bitwise OR of the individual flags. Since the file access modes are not single-bit values, you can mask off other bits in the returned flags with ‘O_ACCMODE’ to compare them. In case of an error, ‘fcntl’ returns -1. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this command: ‘EBADF’ The FILEDES argument is invalid. -- Macro: int F_SETFL This macro is used as the COMMAND argument to ‘fcntl’, to set the file status flags for the open file corresponding to the FILEDES argument. This command requires a third ‘int’ argument to specify the new flags, so the call looks like this: fcntl (FILEDES, F_SETFL, NEW-FLAGS) You can’t change the access mode for the file in this way; that is, whether the file descriptor was opened for reading or writing. The normal return value from ‘fcntl’ with this command is an unspecified value other than -1, which indicates an error. The error conditions are the same as for the ‘F_GETFL’ command. If you want to modify the file status flags, you should get the current flags with ‘F_GETFL’ and modify the value. Don’t assume that the flags listed here are the only ones that are implemented; your program may be run years from now and more flags may exist then. For example, here is a function to set or clear the flag ‘O_NONBLOCK’ without altering any other flags: /* Set the ‘O_NONBLOCK’ flag of DESC if VALUE is nonzero, or clear the flag if VALUE is 0. Return 0 on success, or -1 on error with ‘errno’ set. */ int set_nonblock_flag (int desc, int value) { int oldflags = fcntl (desc, F_GETFL, 0); /* If reading the flags failed, return error indication now. */ if (oldflags == -1) return -1; /* Set just the flag we want to set. */ if (value != 0) oldflags |= O_NONBLOCK; else oldflags &= ~O_NONBLOCK; /* Store modified flag word in the descriptor. */ return fcntl (desc, F_SETFL, oldflags); }  File: libc.info, Node: File Locks, Next: Open File Description Locks, Prev: File Status Flags, Up: Low-Level I/O 13.16 File Locks ================ This section describes record locks that are associated with the process. There is also a different type of record lock that is associated with the open file description instead of the process. *Note Open File Description Locks::. The remaining ‘fcntl’ commands are used to support “record locking”, which permits multiple cooperating programs to prevent each other from simultaneously accessing parts of a file in error-prone ways. An “exclusive” or “write” lock gives a process exclusive access for writing to the specified part of the file. While a write lock is in place, no other process can lock that part of the file. A “shared” or “read” lock prohibits any other process from requesting a write lock on the specified part of the file. However, other processes can request read locks. The ‘read’ and ‘write’ functions do not actually check to see whether there are any locks in place. If you want to implement a locking protocol for a file shared by multiple processes, your application must do explicit ‘fcntl’ calls to request and clear locks at the appropriate points. Locks are associated with processes. A process can only have one kind of lock set for each byte of a given file. When any file descriptor for that file is closed by the process, all of the locks that process holds on that file are released, even if the locks were made using other descriptors that remain open. Likewise, locks are released when a process exits, and are not inherited by child processes created using ‘fork’ (*note Creating a Process::). When making a lock, use a ‘struct flock’ to specify what kind of lock and where. This data type and the associated macros for the ‘fcntl’ function are declared in the header file ‘fcntl.h’. -- Data Type: struct flock This structure is used with the ‘fcntl’ function to describe a file lock. It has these members: ‘short int l_type’ Specifies the type of the lock; one of ‘F_RDLCK’, ‘F_WRLCK’, or ‘F_UNLCK’. ‘short int l_whence’ This corresponds to the WHENCE argument to ‘fseek’ or ‘lseek’, and specifies what the offset is relative to. Its value can be one of ‘SEEK_SET’, ‘SEEK_CUR’, or ‘SEEK_END’. ‘off_t l_start’ This specifies the offset of the start of the region to which the lock applies, and is given in bytes relative to the point specified by the ‘l_whence’ member. ‘off_t l_len’ This specifies the length of the region to be locked. A value of ‘0’ is treated specially; it means the region extends to the end of the file. ‘pid_t l_pid’ This field is the process ID (*note Process Creation Concepts::) of the process holding the lock. It is filled in by calling ‘fcntl’ with the ‘F_GETLK’ command, but is ignored when making a lock. If the conflicting lock is an open file description lock (*note Open File Description Locks::), then this field will be set to -1. -- Macro: int F_GETLK This macro is used as the COMMAND argument to ‘fcntl’, to specify that it should get information about a lock. This command requires a third argument of type ‘struct flock *’ to be passed to ‘fcntl’, so that the form of the call is: fcntl (FILEDES, F_GETLK, LOCKP) If there is a lock already in place that would block the lock described by the LOCKP argument, information about that lock overwrites ‘*LOCKP’. Existing locks are not reported if they are compatible with making a new lock as specified. Thus, you should specify a lock type of ‘F_WRLCK’ if you want to find out about both read and write locks, or ‘F_RDLCK’ if you want to find out about write locks only. There might be more than one lock affecting the region specified by the LOCKP argument, but ‘fcntl’ only returns information about one of them. The ‘l_whence’ member of the LOCKP structure is set to ‘SEEK_SET’ and the ‘l_start’ and ‘l_len’ fields set to identify the locked region. If no lock applies, the only change to the LOCKP structure is to update the ‘l_type’ to a value of ‘F_UNLCK’. The normal return value from ‘fcntl’ with this command is an unspecified value other than -1, which is reserved to indicate an error. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this command: ‘EBADF’ The FILEDES argument is invalid. ‘EINVAL’ Either the LOCKP argument doesn’t specify valid lock information, or the file associated with FILEDES doesn’t support locks. -- Macro: int F_SETLK This macro is used as the COMMAND argument to ‘fcntl’, to specify that it should set or clear a lock. This command requires a third argument of type ‘struct flock *’ to be passed to ‘fcntl’, so that the form of the call is: fcntl (FILEDES, F_SETLK, LOCKP) If the process already has a lock on any part of the region, the old lock on that part is replaced with the new lock. You can remove a lock by specifying a lock type of ‘F_UNLCK’. If the lock cannot be set, ‘fcntl’ returns immediately with a value of -1. This function does not block while waiting for other processes to release locks. If ‘fcntl’ succeeds, it returns a value other than -1. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EAGAIN’ ‘EACCES’ The lock cannot be set because it is blocked by an existing lock on the file. Some systems use ‘EAGAIN’ in this case, and other systems use ‘EACCES’; your program should treat them alike, after ‘F_SETLK’. (GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd systems always use ‘EAGAIN’.) ‘EBADF’ Either: the FILEDES argument is invalid; you requested a read lock but the FILEDES is not open for read access; or, you requested a write lock but the FILEDES is not open for write access. ‘EINVAL’ Either the LOCKP argument doesn’t specify valid lock information, or the file associated with FILEDES doesn’t support locks. ‘ENOLCK’ The system has run out of file lock resources; there are already too many file locks in place. Well-designed file systems never report this error, because they have no limitation on the number of locks. However, you must still take account of the possibility of this error, as it could result from network access to a file system on another machine. -- Macro: int F_SETLKW This macro is used as the COMMAND argument to ‘fcntl’, to specify that it should set or clear a lock. It is just like the ‘F_SETLK’ command, but causes the process to block (or wait) until the request can be specified. This command requires a third argument of type ‘struct flock *’, as for the ‘F_SETLK’ command. The ‘fcntl’ return values and errors are the same as for the ‘F_SETLK’ command, but these additional ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this command: ‘EINTR’ The function was interrupted by a signal while it was waiting. *Note Interrupted Primitives::. ‘EDEADLK’ The specified region is being locked by another process. But that process is waiting to lock a region which the current process has locked, so waiting for the lock would result in deadlock. The system does not guarantee that it will detect all such conditions, but it lets you know if it notices one. The following macros are defined for use as values for the ‘l_type’ member of the ‘flock’ structure. The values are integer constants. ‘F_RDLCK’ This macro is used to specify a read (or shared) lock. ‘F_WRLCK’ This macro is used to specify a write (or exclusive) lock. ‘F_UNLCK’ This macro is used to specify that the region is unlocked. As an example of a situation where file locking is useful, consider a program that can be run simultaneously by several different users, that logs status information to a common file. One example of such a program might be a game that uses a file to keep track of high scores. Another example might be a program that records usage or accounting information for billing purposes. Having multiple copies of the program simultaneously writing to the file could cause the contents of the file to become mixed up. But you can prevent this kind of problem by setting a write lock on the file before actually writing to the file. If the program also needs to read the file and wants to make sure that the contents of the file are in a consistent state, then it can also use a read lock. While the read lock is set, no other process can lock that part of the file for writing. Remember that file locks are only an _advisory_ protocol for controlling access to a file. There is still potential for access to the file by programs that don’t use the lock protocol.  File: libc.info, Node: Open File Description Locks, Next: Open File Description Locks Example, Prev: File Locks, Up: Low-Level I/O 13.17 Open File Description Locks ================================= In contrast to process-associated record locks (*note File Locks::), open file description record locks are associated with an open file description rather than a process. Using ‘fcntl’ to apply an open file description lock on a region that already has an existing open file description lock that was created via the same file descriptor will never cause a lock conflict. Open file description locks are also inherited by child processes across ‘fork’, or ‘clone’ with ‘CLONE_FILES’ set (*note Creating a Process::), along with the file descriptor. It is important to distinguish between the open file _description_ (an instance of an open file, usually created by a call to ‘open’) and an open file _descriptor_, which is a numeric value that refers to the open file description. The locks described here are associated with the open file _description_ and not the open file _descriptor_. Using ‘dup’ (*note Duplicating Descriptors::) to copy a file descriptor does not give you a new open file description, but rather copies a reference to an existing open file description and assigns it to a new file descriptor. Thus, open file description locks set on a file descriptor cloned by ‘dup’ will never conflict with open file description locks set on the original descriptor since they refer to the same open file description. Depending on the range and type of lock involved, the original lock may be modified by a ‘F_OFD_SETLK’ or ‘F_OFD_SETLKW’ command in this situation however. Open file description locks always conflict with process-associated locks, even if acquired by the same process or on the same open file descriptor. Open file description locks use the same ‘struct flock’ as process-associated locks as an argument (*note File Locks::) and the macros for the ‘command’ values are also declared in the header file ‘fcntl.h’. To use them, the macro ‘_GNU_SOURCE’ must be defined prior to including any header file. In contrast to process-associated locks, any ‘struct flock’ used as an argument to open file description lock commands must have the ‘l_pid’ value set to 0. Also, when returning information about an open file description lock in a ‘F_GETLK’ or ‘F_OFD_GETLK’ request, the ‘l_pid’ field in ‘struct flock’ will be set to -1 to indicate that the lock is not associated with a process. When the same ‘struct flock’ is reused as an argument to a ‘F_OFD_SETLK’ or ‘F_OFD_SETLKW’ request after being used for an ‘F_OFD_GETLK’ request, it is necessary to inspect and reset the ‘l_pid’ field to 0. -- Macro: int F_OFD_GETLK This macro is used as the COMMAND argument to ‘fcntl’, to specify that it should get information about a lock. This command requires a third argument of type ‘struct flock *’ to be passed to ‘fcntl’, so that the form of the call is: fcntl (FILEDES, F_OFD_GETLK, LOCKP) If there is a lock already in place that would block the lock described by the LOCKP argument, information about that lock is written to ‘*LOCKP’. Existing locks are not reported if they are compatible with making a new lock as specified. Thus, you should specify a lock type of ‘F_WRLCK’ if you want to find out about both read and write locks, or ‘F_RDLCK’ if you want to find out about write locks only. There might be more than one lock affecting the region specified by the LOCKP argument, but ‘fcntl’ only returns information about one of them. Which lock is returned in this situation is undefined. The ‘l_whence’ member of the LOCKP structure are set to ‘SEEK_SET’ and the ‘l_start’ and ‘l_len’ fields are set to identify the locked region. If no conflicting lock exists, the only change to the LOCKP structure is to update the ‘l_type’ field to the value ‘F_UNLCK’. The normal return value from ‘fcntl’ with this command is either 0 on success or -1, which indicates an error. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this command: ‘EBADF’ The FILEDES argument is invalid. ‘EINVAL’ Either the LOCKP argument doesn’t specify valid lock information, the operating system kernel doesn’t support open file description locks, or the file associated with FILEDES doesn’t support locks. -- Macro: int F_OFD_SETLK This macro is used as the COMMAND argument to ‘fcntl’, to specify that it should set or clear a lock. This command requires a third argument of type ‘struct flock *’ to be passed to ‘fcntl’, so that the form of the call is: fcntl (FILEDES, F_OFD_SETLK, LOCKP) If the open file already has a lock on any part of the region, the old lock on that part is replaced with the new lock. You can remove a lock by specifying a lock type of ‘F_UNLCK’. If the lock cannot be set, ‘fcntl’ returns immediately with a value of -1. This command does not wait for other tasks to release locks. If ‘fcntl’ succeeds, it returns 0. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this command: ‘EAGAIN’ The lock cannot be set because it is blocked by an existing lock on the file. ‘EBADF’ Either: the FILEDES argument is invalid; you requested a read lock but the FILEDES is not open for read access; or, you requested a write lock but the FILEDES is not open for write access. ‘EINVAL’ Either the LOCKP argument doesn’t specify valid lock information, the operating system kernel doesn’t support open file description locks, or the file associated with FILEDES doesn’t support locks. ‘ENOLCK’ The system has run out of file lock resources; there are already too many file locks in place. Well-designed file systems never report this error, because they have no limitation on the number of locks. However, you must still take account of the possibility of this error, as it could result from network access to a file system on another machine. -- Macro: int F_OFD_SETLKW This macro is used as the COMMAND argument to ‘fcntl’, to specify that it should set or clear a lock. It is just like the ‘F_OFD_SETLK’ command, but causes the process to wait until the request can be completed. This command requires a third argument of type ‘struct flock *’, as for the ‘F_OFD_SETLK’ command. The ‘fcntl’ return values and errors are the same as for the ‘F_OFD_SETLK’ command, but these additional ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this command: ‘EINTR’ The function was interrupted by a signal while it was waiting. *Note Interrupted Primitives::. Open file description locks are useful in the same sorts of situations as process-associated locks. They can also be used to synchronize file access between threads within the same process by having each thread perform its own ‘open’ of the file, to obtain its own open file description. Because open file description locks are automatically freed only upon closing the last file descriptor that refers to the open file description, this locking mechanism avoids the possibility that locks are inadvertently released due to a library routine opening and closing a file without the application being aware. As with process-associated locks, open file description locks are advisory.  File: libc.info, Node: Open File Description Locks Example, Next: Interrupt Input, Prev: Open File Description Locks, Up: Low-Level I/O 13.18 Open File Description Locks Example ========================================= Here is an example of using open file description locks in a threaded program. If this program used process-associated locks, then it would be subject to data corruption because process-associated locks are shared by the threads inside a process, and thus cannot be used by one thread to lock out another thread in the same process. Proper error handling has been omitted in the following program for brevity. #define _GNU_SOURCE #include #include #include #include #include #include #define FILENAME "/tmp/foo" #define NUM_THREADS 3 #define ITERATIONS 5 void * thread_start (void *arg) { int i, fd, len; long tid = (long) arg; char buf[256]; struct flock lck = { .l_whence = SEEK_SET, .l_start = 0, .l_len = 1, }; fd = open ("/tmp/foo", O_RDWR | O_CREAT, 0666); for (i = 0; i < ITERATIONS; i++) { lck.l_type = F_WRLCK; fcntl (fd, F_OFD_SETLKW, &lck); len = sprintf (buf, "%d: tid=%ld fd=%d\n", i, tid, fd); lseek (fd, 0, SEEK_END); write (fd, buf, len); fsync (fd); lck.l_type = F_UNLCK; fcntl (fd, F_OFD_SETLK, &lck); /* sleep to ensure lock is yielded to another thread */ usleep (1); } pthread_exit (NULL); } int main (int argc, char **argv) { long i; pthread_t threads[NUM_THREADS]; truncate (FILENAME, 0); for (i = 0; i < NUM_THREADS; i++) pthread_create (&threads[i], NULL, thread_start, (void *) i); pthread_exit (NULL); return 0; } This example creates three threads each of which loops five times, appending to the file. Access to the file is serialized via open file description locks. If we compile and run the above program, we’ll end up with /tmp/foo that has 15 lines in it. If we, however, were to replace the ‘F_OFD_SETLK’ and ‘F_OFD_SETLKW’ commands with their process-associated lock equivalents, the locking essentially becomes a noop since it is all done within the context of the same process. That leads to data corruption (typically manifested as missing lines) as some threads race in and overwrite the data written by others.  File: libc.info, Node: Interrupt Input, Next: IOCTLs, Prev: Open File Description Locks Example, Up: Low-Level I/O 13.19 Interrupt-Driven Input ============================ If you set the ‘O_ASYNC’ status flag on a file descriptor (*note File Status Flags::), a ‘SIGIO’ signal is sent whenever input or output becomes possible on that file descriptor. The process or process group to receive the signal can be selected by using the ‘F_SETOWN’ command to the ‘fcntl’ function. If the file descriptor is a socket, this also selects the recipient of ‘SIGURG’ signals that are delivered when out-of-band data arrives on that socket; see *note Out-of-Band Data::. (‘SIGURG’ is sent in any situation where ‘select’ would report the socket as having an “exceptional condition”. *Note Waiting for I/O::.) If the file descriptor corresponds to a terminal device, then ‘SIGIO’ signals are sent to the foreground process group of the terminal. *Note Job Control::. The symbols in this section are defined in the header file ‘fcntl.h’. -- Macro: int F_GETOWN This macro is used as the COMMAND argument to ‘fcntl’, to specify that it should get information about the process or process group to which ‘SIGIO’ signals are sent. (For a terminal, this is actually the foreground process group ID, which you can get using ‘tcgetpgrp’; see *note Terminal Access Functions::.) The return value is interpreted as a process ID; if negative, its absolute value is the process group ID. The following ‘errno’ error condition is defined for this command: ‘EBADF’ The FILEDES argument is invalid. -- Macro: int F_SETOWN This macro is used as the COMMAND argument to ‘fcntl’, to specify that it should set the process or process group to which ‘SIGIO’ signals are sent. This command requires a third argument of type ‘pid_t’ to be passed to ‘fcntl’, so that the form of the call is: fcntl (FILEDES, F_SETOWN, PID) The PID argument should be a process ID. You can also pass a negative number whose absolute value is a process group ID. The return value from ‘fcntl’ with this command is -1 in case of error and some other value if successful. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this command: ‘EBADF’ The FILEDES argument is invalid. ‘ESRCH’ There is no process or process group corresponding to PID.  File: libc.info, Node: IOCTLs, Prev: Interrupt Input, Up: Low-Level I/O 13.20 Generic I/O Control operations ==================================== GNU systems can handle most input/output operations on many different devices and objects in terms of a few file primitives - ‘read’, ‘write’ and ‘lseek’. However, most devices also have a few peculiar operations which do not fit into this model. Such as: • Changing the character font used on a terminal. • Telling a magnetic tape system to rewind or fast forward. (Since they cannot move in byte increments, ‘lseek’ is inapplicable). • Ejecting a disk from a drive. • Playing an audio track from a CD-ROM drive. • Maintaining routing tables for a network. Although some such objects such as sockets and terminals (1) have special functions of their own, it would not be practical to create functions for all these cases. Instead these minor operations, known as “IOCTL”s, are assigned code numbers and multiplexed through the ‘ioctl’ function, defined in ‘sys/ioctl.h’. The code numbers themselves are defined in many different headers. -- Function: int ioctl (int FILEDES, int COMMAND, ...) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘ioctl’ function performs the generic I/O operation COMMAND on FILEDES. A third argument is usually present, either a single number or a pointer to a structure. The meaning of this argument, the returned value, and any error codes depends upon the command used. Often -1 is returned for a failure. On some systems, IOCTLs used by different devices share the same numbers. Thus, although use of an inappropriate IOCTL _usually_ only produces an error, you should not attempt to use device-specific IOCTLs on an unknown device. Most IOCTLs are OS-specific and/or only used in special system utilities, and are thus beyond the scope of this document. For an example of the use of an IOCTL, see *note Out-of-Band Data::. ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) Actually, the terminal-specific functions are implemented with IOCTLs on many platforms.  File: libc.info, Node: File System Interface, Next: Pipes and FIFOs, Prev: Low-Level I/O, Up: Top 14 File System Interface ************************ This chapter describes the GNU C Library’s functions for manipulating files. Unlike the input and output functions (*note I/O on Streams::; *note Low-Level I/O::), these functions are concerned with operating on the files themselves rather than on their contents. Among the facilities described in this chapter are functions for examining or modifying directories, functions for renaming and deleting files, and functions for examining and setting file attributes such as access permissions and modification times. * Menu: * Working Directory:: This is used to resolve relative file names. * Accessing Directories:: Finding out what files a directory contains. * Working with Directory Trees:: Apply actions to all files or a selectable subset of a directory hierarchy. * Hard Links:: Adding alternate names to a file. * Symbolic Links:: A file that “points to” a file name. * Deleting Files:: How to delete a file, and what that means. * Renaming Files:: Changing a file’s name. * Creating Directories:: A system call just for creating a directory. * File Attributes:: Attributes of individual files. * Making Special Files:: How to create special files. * Temporary Files:: Naming and creating temporary files.  File: libc.info, Node: Working Directory, Next: Accessing Directories, Up: File System Interface 14.1 Working Directory ====================== Each process has associated with it a directory, called its “current working directory” or simply “working directory”, that is used in the resolution of relative file names (*note File Name Resolution::). When you log in and begin a new session, your working directory is initially set to the home directory associated with your login account in the system user database. You can find any user’s home directory using the ‘getpwuid’ or ‘getpwnam’ functions; see *note User Database::. Users can change the working directory using shell commands like ‘cd’. The functions described in this section are the primitives used by those commands and by other programs for examining and changing the working directory. Prototypes for these functions are declared in the header file ‘unistd.h’. -- Function: char * getcwd (char *BUFFER, size_t SIZE) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘getcwd’ function returns an absolute file name representing the current working directory, storing it in the character array BUFFER that you provide. The SIZE argument is how you tell the system the allocation size of BUFFER. The GNU C Library version of this function also permits you to specify a null pointer for the BUFFER argument. Then ‘getcwd’ allocates a buffer automatically, as with ‘malloc’ (*note Unconstrained Allocation::). If the SIZE is greater than zero, then the buffer is that large; otherwise, the buffer is as large as necessary to hold the result. The return value is BUFFER on success and a null pointer on failure. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EINVAL’ The SIZE argument is zero and BUFFER is not a null pointer. ‘ERANGE’ The SIZE argument is less than the length of the working directory name. You need to allocate a bigger array and try again. ‘EACCES’ Permission to read or search a component of the file name was denied. You could implement the behavior of GNU’s ‘getcwd (NULL, 0)’ using only the standard behavior of ‘getcwd’: char * gnu_getcwd () { size_t size = 100; while (1) { char *buffer = (char *) xmalloc (size); if (getcwd (buffer, size) == buffer) return buffer; free (buffer); if (errno != ERANGE) return 0; size *= 2; } } *Note Malloc Examples::, for information about ‘xmalloc’, which is not a library function but is a customary name used in most GNU software. -- Deprecated Function: char * getwd (char *BUFFER) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap i18n | AC-Unsafe mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This is similar to ‘getcwd’, but has no way to specify the size of the buffer. The GNU C Library provides ‘getwd’ only for backwards compatibility with BSD. The BUFFER argument should be a pointer to an array at least ‘PATH_MAX’ bytes long (*note Limits for Files::). On GNU/Hurd systems there is no limit to the size of a file name, so this is not necessarily enough space to contain the directory name. That is why this function is deprecated. -- Function: char * get_current_dir_name (void) Preliminary: | MT-Safe env | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘get_current_dir_name’ function is basically equivalent to ‘getcwd (NULL, 0)’, except the value of the ‘PWD’ environment variable is first examined, and if it does in fact correspond to the current directory, that value is returned. This is a subtle difference which is visible if the path described by the value in ‘PWD’ is using one or more symbolic links, in which case the value returned by ‘getcwd’ would resolve the symbolic links and therefore yield a different result. This function is a GNU extension. -- Function: int chdir (const char *FILENAME) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is used to set the process’s working directory to FILENAME. The normal, successful return value from ‘chdir’ is ‘0’. A value of ‘-1’ is returned to indicate an error. The ‘errno’ error conditions defined for this function are the usual file name syntax errors (*note File Name Errors::), plus ‘ENOTDIR’ if the file FILENAME is not a directory. -- Function: int fchdir (int FILEDES) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is used to set the process’s working directory to directory associated with the file descriptor FILEDES. The normal, successful return value from ‘fchdir’ is ‘0’. A value of ‘-1’ is returned to indicate an error. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EACCES’ Read permission is denied for the directory named by ‘dirname’. ‘EBADF’ The FILEDES argument is not a valid file descriptor. ‘ENOTDIR’ The file descriptor FILEDES is not associated with a directory. ‘EINTR’ The function call was interrupt by a signal. ‘EIO’ An I/O error occurred.  File: libc.info, Node: Accessing Directories, Next: Working with Directory Trees, Prev: Working Directory, Up: File System Interface 14.2 Accessing Directories ========================== The facilities described in this section let you read the contents of a directory file. This is useful if you want your program to list all the files in a directory, perhaps as part of a menu. The ‘opendir’ function opens a “directory stream” whose elements are directory entries. Alternatively ‘fdopendir’ can be used which can have advantages if the program needs to have more control over the way the directory is opened for reading. This allows, for instance, to pass the ‘O_NOATIME’ flag to ‘open’. You use the ‘readdir’ function on the directory stream to retrieve these entries, represented as ‘struct dirent’ objects. The name of the file for each entry is stored in the ‘d_name’ member of this structure. There are obvious parallels here to the stream facilities for ordinary files, described in *note I/O on Streams::. * Menu: * Directory Entries:: Format of one directory entry. * Opening a Directory:: How to open a directory stream. * Reading/Closing Directory:: How to read directory entries from the stream. * Simple Directory Lister:: A very simple directory listing program. * Random Access Directory:: Rereading part of the directory already read with the same stream. * Scanning Directory Content:: Get entries for user selected subset of contents in given directory. * Simple Directory Lister Mark II:: Revised version of the program.  File: libc.info, Node: Directory Entries, Next: Opening a Directory, Up: Accessing Directories 14.2.1 Format of a Directory Entry ---------------------------------- This section describes what you find in a single directory entry, as you might obtain it from a directory stream. All the symbols are declared in the header file ‘dirent.h’. -- Data Type: struct dirent This is a structure type used to return information about directory entries. It contains the following fields: ‘char d_name[]’ This is the null-terminated file name component. This is the only field you can count on in all POSIX systems. ‘ino_t d_fileno’ This is the file serial number. For BSD compatibility, you can also refer to this member as ‘d_ino’. On GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd systems and most POSIX systems, for most files this the same as the ‘st_ino’ member that ‘stat’ will return for the file. *Note File Attributes::. ‘unsigned char d_namlen’ This is the length of the file name, not including the terminating null character. Its type is ‘unsigned char’ because that is the integer type of the appropriate size. This member is a BSD extension. The symbol ‘_DIRENT_HAVE_D_NAMLEN’ is defined if this member is available. ‘unsigned char d_type’ This is the type of the file, possibly unknown. The following constants are defined for its value: ‘DT_UNKNOWN’ The type is unknown. Only some filesystems have full support to return the type of the file, others might always return this value. ‘DT_REG’ A regular file. ‘DT_DIR’ A directory. ‘DT_FIFO’ A named pipe, or FIFO. *Note FIFO Special Files::. ‘DT_SOCK’ A local-domain socket. ‘DT_CHR’ A character device. ‘DT_BLK’ A block device. ‘DT_LNK’ A symbolic link. This member is a BSD extension. The symbol ‘_DIRENT_HAVE_D_TYPE’ is defined if this member is available. On systems where it is used, it corresponds to the file type bits in the ‘st_mode’ member of ‘struct stat’. If the value cannot be determined the member value is DT_UNKNOWN. These two macros convert between ‘d_type’ values and ‘st_mode’ values: -- Function: int IFTODT (mode_t MODE) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This returns the ‘d_type’ value corresponding to MODE. -- Function: mode_t DTTOIF (int DTYPE) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This returns the ‘st_mode’ value corresponding to DTYPE. This structure may contain additional members in the future. Their availability is always announced in the compilation environment by a macro named ‘_DIRENT_HAVE_D_XXX’ where XXX is replaced by the name of the new member. For instance, the member ‘d_reclen’ available on some systems is announced through the macro ‘_DIRENT_HAVE_D_RECLEN’. When a file has multiple names, each name has its own directory entry. The only way you can tell that the directory entries belong to a single file is that they have the same value for the ‘d_fileno’ field. File attributes such as size, modification times etc., are part of the file itself, not of any particular directory entry. *Note File Attributes::.  File: libc.info, Node: Opening a Directory, Next: Reading/Closing Directory, Prev: Directory Entries, Up: Accessing Directories 14.2.2 Opening a Directory Stream --------------------------------- This section describes how to open a directory stream. All the symbols are declared in the header file ‘dirent.h’. -- Data Type: DIR The ‘DIR’ data type represents a directory stream. You shouldn’t ever allocate objects of the ‘struct dirent’ or ‘DIR’ data types, since the directory access functions do that for you. Instead, you refer to these objects using the pointers returned by the following functions. -- Function: DIR * opendir (const char *DIRNAME) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘opendir’ function opens and returns a directory stream for reading the directory whose file name is DIRNAME. The stream has type ‘DIR *’. If unsuccessful, ‘opendir’ returns a null pointer. In addition to the usual file name errors (*note File Name Errors::), the following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EACCES’ Read permission is denied for the directory named by ‘dirname’. ‘EMFILE’ The process has too many files open. ‘ENFILE’ The entire system, or perhaps the file system which contains the directory, cannot support any additional open files at the moment. (This problem cannot happen on GNU/Hurd systems.) ‘ENOMEM’ Not enough memory available. The ‘DIR’ type is typically implemented using a file descriptor, and the ‘opendir’ function in terms of the ‘open’ function. *Note Low-Level I/O::. Directory streams and the underlying file descriptors are closed on ‘exec’ (*note Executing a File::). The directory which is opened for reading by ‘opendir’ is identified by the name. In some situations this is not sufficient. Or the way ‘opendir’ implicitly creates a file descriptor for the directory is not the way a program might want it. In these cases an alternative interface can be used. -- Function: DIR * fdopendir (int FD) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘fdopendir’ function works just like ‘opendir’ but instead of taking a file name and opening a file descriptor for the directory the caller is required to provide a file descriptor. This file descriptor is then used in subsequent uses of the returned directory stream object. The caller must make sure the file descriptor is associated with a directory and it allows reading. If the ‘fdopendir’ call returns successfully the file descriptor is now under the control of the system. It can be used in the same way the descriptor implicitly created by ‘opendir’ can be used but the program must not close the descriptor. In case the function is unsuccessful it returns a null pointer and the file descriptor remains to be usable by the program. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EBADF’ The file descriptor is not valid. ‘ENOTDIR’ The file descriptor is not associated with a directory. ‘EINVAL’ The descriptor does not allow reading the directory content. ‘ENOMEM’ Not enough memory available. In some situations it can be desirable to get hold of the file descriptor which is created by the ‘opendir’ call. For instance, to switch the current working directory to the directory just read the ‘fchdir’ function could be used. Historically the ‘DIR’ type was exposed and programs could access the fields. This does not happen in the GNU C Library. Instead a separate function is provided to allow access. -- Function: int dirfd (DIR *DIRSTREAM) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The function ‘dirfd’ returns the file descriptor associated with the directory stream DIRSTREAM. This descriptor can be used until the directory is closed with ‘closedir’. If the directory stream implementation is not using file descriptors the return value is ‘-1’.  File: libc.info, Node: Reading/Closing Directory, Next: Simple Directory Lister, Prev: Opening a Directory, Up: Accessing Directories 14.2.3 Reading and Closing a Directory Stream --------------------------------------------- This section describes how to read directory entries from a directory stream, and how to close the stream when you are done with it. All the symbols are declared in the header file ‘dirent.h’. -- Function: struct dirent * readdir (DIR *DIRSTREAM) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock | AC-Unsafe lock | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function reads the next entry from the directory. It normally returns a pointer to a structure containing information about the file. This structure is associated with the DIRSTREAM handle and can be rewritten by a subsequent call. *Portability Note:* On some systems ‘readdir’ may not return entries for ‘.’ and ‘..’, even though these are always valid file names in any directory. *Note File Name Resolution::. If there are no more entries in the directory or an error is detected, ‘readdir’ returns a null pointer. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EBADF’ The DIRSTREAM argument is not valid. To distinguish between an end-of-directory condition or an error, you must set ‘errno’ to zero before calling ‘readdir’. To avoid entering an infinite loop, you should stop reading from the directory after the first error. *Caution:* The pointer returned by ‘readdir’ points to a buffer within the ‘DIR’ object. The data in that buffer will be overwritten by the next call to ‘readdir’. You must take care, for instance, to copy the ‘d_name’ string if you need it later. Because of this, it is not safe to share a ‘DIR’ object among multiple threads, unless you use your own locking to ensure that no thread calls ‘readdir’ while another thread is still using the data from the previous call. In the GNU C Library, it is safe to call ‘readdir’ from multiple threads as long as each thread uses its own ‘DIR’ object. POSIX.1-2008 does not require this to be safe, but we are not aware of any operating systems where it does not work. ‘readdir_r’ allows you to provide your own buffer for the ‘struct dirent’, but it is less portable than ‘readdir’, and has problems with very long filenames (see below). We recommend you use ‘readdir’, but do not share ‘DIR’ objects. -- Function: int readdir_r (DIR *DIRSTREAM, struct dirent *ENTRY, struct dirent **RESULT) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock | AC-Unsafe lock | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is a version of ‘readdir’ which performs internal locking. Like ‘readdir’ it returns the next entry from the directory. To prevent conflicts between simultaneously running threads the result is stored inside the ENTRY object. *Portability Note:* ‘readdir_r’ is deprecated. It is recommended to use ‘readdir’ instead of ‘readdir_r’ for the following reasons: • On systems which do not define ‘NAME_MAX’, it may not be possible to use ‘readdir_r’ safely because the caller does not specify the length of the buffer for the directory entry. • On some systems, ‘readdir_r’ cannot read directory entries with very long names. If such a name is encountered, the GNU C Library implementation of ‘readdir_r’ returns with an error code of ‘ENAMETOOLONG’ after the final directory entry has been read. On other systems, ‘readdir_r’ may return successfully, but the ‘d_name’ member may not be NUL-terminated or may be truncated. • POSIX-1.2008 does not guarantee that ‘readdir’ is thread-safe, even when access to the same DIRSTREAM is serialized. But in current implementations (including the GNU C Library), it is safe to call ‘readdir’ concurrently on different DIRSTREAMs, so there is no need to use ‘readdir_r’ in most multi-threaded programs. In the rare case that multiple threads need to read from the same DIRSTREAM, it is still better to use ‘readdir’ and external synchronization. • It is expected that future versions of POSIX will obsolete ‘readdir_r’ and mandate the level of thread safety for ‘readdir’ which is provided by the GNU C Library and other implementations today. Normally ‘readdir_r’ returns zero and sets ‘*RESULT’ to ENTRY. If there are no more entries in the directory or an error is detected, ‘readdir_r’ sets ‘*RESULT’ to a null pointer and returns a nonzero error code, also stored in ‘errno’, as described for ‘readdir’. It is also important to look at the definition of the ‘struct dirent’ type. Simply passing a pointer to an object of this type for the second parameter of ‘readdir_r’ might not be enough. Some systems don’t define the ‘d_name’ element sufficiently long. In this case the user has to provide additional space. There must be room for at least ‘NAME_MAX + 1’ characters in the ‘d_name’ array. Code to call ‘readdir_r’ could look like this: union { struct dirent d; char b[offsetof (struct dirent, d_name) + NAME_MAX + 1]; } u; if (readdir_r (dir, &u.d, &res) == 0) ... To support large filesystems on 32-bit machines there are LFS variants of the last two functions. -- Function: struct dirent64 * readdir64 (DIR *DIRSTREAM) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock | AC-Unsafe lock | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘readdir64’ function is just like the ‘readdir’ function except that it returns a pointer to a record of type ‘struct dirent64’. Some of the members of this data type (notably ‘d_ino’) might have a different size to allow large filesystems. In all other aspects this function is equivalent to ‘readdir’. -- Function: int readdir64_r (DIR *DIRSTREAM, struct dirent64 *ENTRY, struct dirent64 **RESULT) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock | AC-Unsafe lock | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The deprecated ‘readdir64_r’ function is equivalent to the ‘readdir_r’ function except that it takes parameters of base type ‘struct dirent64’ instead of ‘struct dirent’ in the second and third position. The same precautions mentioned in the documentation of ‘readdir_r’ also apply here. -- Function: int closedir (DIR *DIRSTREAM) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap lock/hurd | AC-Unsafe mem fd lock/hurd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function closes the directory stream DIRSTREAM. It returns ‘0’ on success and ‘-1’ on failure. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EBADF’ The DIRSTREAM argument is not valid.  File: libc.info, Node: Simple Directory Lister, Next: Random Access Directory, Prev: Reading/Closing Directory, Up: Accessing Directories 14.2.4 Simple Program to List a Directory ----------------------------------------- Here’s a simple program that prints the names of the files in the current working directory: #include #include #include int main (void) { DIR *dp; struct dirent *ep; dp = opendir ("./"); if (dp != NULL) { while (ep = readdir (dp)) puts (ep->d_name); (void) closedir (dp); } else perror ("Couldn't open the directory"); return 0; } The order in which files appear in a directory tends to be fairly random. A more useful program would sort the entries (perhaps by alphabetizing them) before printing them; see *note Scanning Directory Content::, and *note Array Sort Function::.  File: libc.info, Node: Random Access Directory, Next: Scanning Directory Content, Prev: Simple Directory Lister, Up: Accessing Directories 14.2.5 Random Access in a Directory Stream ------------------------------------------ This section describes how to reread parts of a directory that you have already read from an open directory stream. All the symbols are declared in the header file ‘dirent.h’. -- Function: void rewinddir (DIR *DIRSTREAM) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock | AC-Unsafe lock | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘rewinddir’ function is used to reinitialize the directory stream DIRSTREAM, so that if you call ‘readdir’ it returns information about the first entry in the directory again. This function also notices if files have been added or removed to the directory since it was opened with ‘opendir’. (Entries for these files might or might not be returned by ‘readdir’ if they were added or removed since you last called ‘opendir’ or ‘rewinddir’.) -- Function: long int telldir (DIR *DIRSTREAM) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap/bsd lock/bsd | AC-Unsafe mem/bsd lock/bsd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘telldir’ function returns the file position of the directory stream DIRSTREAM. You can use this value with ‘seekdir’ to restore the directory stream to that position. -- Function: void seekdir (DIR *DIRSTREAM, long int POS) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap/bsd lock/bsd | AC-Unsafe mem/bsd lock/bsd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘seekdir’ function sets the file position of the directory stream DIRSTREAM to POS. The value POS must be the result of a previous call to ‘telldir’ on this particular stream; closing and reopening the directory can invalidate values returned by ‘telldir’.  File: libc.info, Node: Scanning Directory Content, Next: Simple Directory Lister Mark II, Prev: Random Access Directory, Up: Accessing Directories 14.2.6 Scanning the Content of a Directory ------------------------------------------ A higher-level interface to the directory handling functions is the ‘scandir’ function. With its help one can select a subset of the entries in a directory, possibly sort them and get a list of names as the result. -- Function: int scandir (const char *DIR, struct dirent ***NAMELIST, int (*SELECTOR) (const struct dirent *), int (*CMP) (const struct dirent **, const struct dirent **)) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘scandir’ function scans the contents of the directory selected by DIR. The result in *NAMELIST is an array of pointers to structures of type ‘struct dirent’ which describe all selected directory entries and which is allocated using ‘malloc’. Instead of always getting all directory entries returned, the user supplied function SELECTOR can be used to decide which entries are in the result. Only the entries for which SELECTOR returns a non-zero value are selected. Finally the entries in *NAMELIST are sorted using the user-supplied function CMP. The arguments passed to the CMP function are of type ‘struct dirent **’, therefore one cannot directly use the ‘strcmp’ or ‘strcoll’ functions; instead see the functions ‘alphasort’ and ‘versionsort’ below. The return value of the function is the number of entries placed in *NAMELIST. If it is ‘-1’ an error occurred (either the directory could not be opened for reading or the malloc call failed) and the global variable ‘errno’ contains more information on the error. As described above, the fourth argument to the ‘scandir’ function must be a pointer to a sorting function. For the convenience of the programmer the GNU C Library contains implementations of functions which are very helpful for this purpose. -- Function: int alphasort (const struct dirent **A, const struct dirent **B) Preliminary: | MT-Safe locale | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘alphasort’ function behaves like the ‘strcoll’ function (*note String/Array Comparison::). The difference is that the arguments are not string pointers but instead they are of type ‘struct dirent **’. The return value of ‘alphasort’ is less than, equal to, or greater than zero depending on the order of the two entries A and B. -- Function: int versionsort (const struct dirent **A, const struct dirent **B) Preliminary: | MT-Safe locale | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘versionsort’ function is like ‘alphasort’ except that it uses the ‘strverscmp’ function internally. If the filesystem supports large files we cannot use the ‘scandir’ anymore since the ‘dirent’ structure might not able to contain all the information. The LFS provides the new type ‘struct dirent64’. To use this we need a new function. -- Function: int scandir64 (const char *DIR, struct dirent64 ***NAMELIST, int (*SELECTOR) (const struct dirent64 *), int (*CMP) (const struct dirent64 **, const struct dirent64 **)) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘scandir64’ function works like the ‘scandir’ function except that the directory entries it returns are described by elements of type ‘struct dirent64’. The function pointed to by SELECTOR is again used to select the desired entries, except that SELECTOR now must point to a function which takes a ‘struct dirent64 *’ parameter. Similarly the CMP function should expect its two arguments to be of type ‘struct dirent64 **’. As CMP is now a function of a different type, the functions ‘alphasort’ and ‘versionsort’ cannot be supplied for that argument. Instead we provide the two replacement functions below. -- Function: int alphasort64 (const struct dirent64 **A, const struct dirent **B) Preliminary: | MT-Safe locale | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘alphasort64’ function behaves like the ‘strcoll’ function (*note String/Array Comparison::). The difference is that the arguments are not string pointers but instead they are of type ‘struct dirent64 **’. Return value of ‘alphasort64’ is less than, equal to, or greater than zero depending on the order of the two entries A and B. -- Function: int versionsort64 (const struct dirent64 **A, const struct dirent64 **B) Preliminary: | MT-Safe locale | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘versionsort64’ function is like ‘alphasort64’, excepted that it uses the ‘strverscmp’ function internally. It is important not to mix the use of ‘scandir’ and the 64-bit comparison functions or vice versa. There are systems on which this works but on others it will fail miserably.  File: libc.info, Node: Simple Directory Lister Mark II, Prev: Scanning Directory Content, Up: Accessing Directories 14.2.7 Simple Program to List a Directory, Mark II -------------------------------------------------- Here is a revised version of the directory lister found above (*note Simple Directory Lister::). Using the ‘scandir’ function we can avoid the functions which work directly with the directory contents. After the call the returned entries are available for direct use. #include #include static int one (const struct dirent *unused) { return 1; } int main (void) { struct dirent **eps; int n; n = scandir ("./", &eps, one, alphasort); if (n >= 0) { int cnt; for (cnt = 0; cnt < n; ++cnt) puts (eps[cnt]->d_name); } else perror ("Couldn't open the directory"); return 0; } Note the simple selector function in this example. Since we want to see all directory entries we always return ‘1’.  File: libc.info, Node: Working with Directory Trees, Next: Hard Links, Prev: Accessing Directories, Up: File System Interface 14.3 Working with Directory Trees ================================= The functions described so far for handling the files in a directory have allowed you to either retrieve the information bit by bit, or to process all the files as a group (see ‘scandir’). Sometimes it is useful to process whole hierarchies of directories and their contained files. The X/Open specification defines two functions to do this. The simpler form is derived from an early definition in System V systems and therefore this function is available on SVID-derived systems. The prototypes and required definitions can be found in the ‘ftw.h’ header. There are four functions in this family: ‘ftw’, ‘nftw’ and their 64-bit counterparts ‘ftw64’ and ‘nftw64’. These functions take as one of their arguments a pointer to a callback function of the appropriate type. -- Data Type: __ftw_func_t int (*) (const char *, const struct stat *, int) The type of callback functions given to the ‘ftw’ function. The first parameter points to the file name, the second parameter to an object of type ‘struct stat’ which is filled in for the file named in the first parameter. The last parameter is a flag giving more information about the current file. It can have the following values: ‘FTW_F’ The item is either a normal file or a file which does not fit into one of the following categories. This could be special files, sockets etc. ‘FTW_D’ The item is a directory. ‘FTW_NS’ The ‘stat’ call failed and so the information pointed to by the second parameter is invalid. ‘FTW_DNR’ The item is a directory which cannot be read. ‘FTW_SL’ The item is a symbolic link. Since symbolic links are normally followed seeing this value in a ‘ftw’ callback function means the referenced file does not exist. The situation for ‘nftw’ is different. This value is only available if the program is compiled with ‘_XOPEN_EXTENDED’ defined before including the first header. The original SVID systems do not have symbolic links. If the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this type is in fact ‘__ftw64_func_t’ since this mode changes ‘struct stat’ to be ‘struct stat64’. For the LFS interface and for use in the function ‘ftw64’, the header ‘ftw.h’ defines another function type. -- Data Type: __ftw64_func_t int (*) (const char *, const struct stat64 *, int) This type is used just like ‘__ftw_func_t’ for the callback function, but this time is called from ‘ftw64’. The second parameter to the function is a pointer to a variable of type ‘struct stat64’ which is able to represent the larger values. -- Data Type: __nftw_func_t int (*) (const char *, const struct stat *, int, struct FTW *) The first three arguments are the same as for the ‘__ftw_func_t’ type. However for the third argument some additional values are defined to allow finer differentiation: ‘FTW_DP’ The current item is a directory and all subdirectories have already been visited and reported. This flag is returned instead of ‘FTW_D’ if the ‘FTW_DEPTH’ flag is passed to ‘nftw’ (see below). ‘FTW_SLN’ The current item is a stale symbolic link. The file it points to does not exist. The last parameter of the callback function is a pointer to a structure with some extra information as described below. If the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this type is in fact ‘__nftw64_func_t’ since this mode changes ‘struct stat’ to be ‘struct stat64’. For the LFS interface there is also a variant of this data type available which has to be used with the ‘nftw64’ function. -- Data Type: __nftw64_func_t int (*) (const char *, const struct stat64 *, int, struct FTW *) This type is used just like ‘__nftw_func_t’ for the callback function, but this time is called from ‘nftw64’. The second parameter to the function is this time a pointer to a variable of type ‘struct stat64’ which is able to represent the larger values. -- Data Type: struct FTW The information contained in this structure helps in interpreting the name parameter and gives some information about the current state of the traversal of the directory hierarchy. ‘int base’ The value is the offset into the string passed in the first parameter to the callback function of the beginning of the file name. The rest of the string is the path of the file. This information is especially important if the ‘FTW_CHDIR’ flag was set in calling ‘nftw’ since then the current directory is the one the current item is found in. ‘int level’ Whilst processing, the code tracks how many directories down it has gone to find the current file. This nesting level starts at 0 for files in the initial directory (or is zero for the initial file if a file was passed). -- Function: int ftw (const char *FILENAME, __ftw_func_t FUNC, int DESCRIPTORS) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘ftw’ function calls the callback function given in the parameter FUNC for every item which is found in the directory specified by FILENAME and all directories below. The function follows symbolic links if necessary but does not process an item twice. If FILENAME is not a directory then it itself is the only object returned to the callback function. The file name passed to the callback function is constructed by taking the FILENAME parameter and appending the names of all passed directories and then the local file name. So the callback function can use this parameter to access the file. ‘ftw’ also calls ‘stat’ for the file and passes that information on to the callback function. If this ‘stat’ call is not successful the failure is indicated by setting the third argument of the callback function to ‘FTW_NS’. Otherwise it is set according to the description given in the account of ‘__ftw_func_t’ above. The callback function is expected to return 0 to indicate that no error occurred and that processing should continue. If an error occurred in the callback function or it wants ‘ftw’ to return immediately, the callback function can return a value other than 0. This is the only correct way to stop the function. The program must not use ‘setjmp’ or similar techniques to continue from another place. This would leave resources allocated by the ‘ftw’ function unfreed. The DESCRIPTORS parameter to ‘ftw’ specifies how many file descriptors it is allowed to consume. The function runs faster the more descriptors it can use. For each level in the directory hierarchy at most one descriptor is used, but for very deep ones any limit on open file descriptors for the process or the system may be exceeded. Moreover, file descriptor limits in a multi-threaded program apply to all the threads as a group, and therefore it is a good idea to supply a reasonable limit to the number of open descriptors. The return value of the ‘ftw’ function is 0 if all callback function calls returned 0 and all actions performed by the ‘ftw’ succeeded. If a function call failed (other than calling ‘stat’ on an item) the function returns -1. If a callback function returns a value other than 0 this value is returned as the return value of ‘ftw’. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ on a 32-bit system this function is in fact ‘ftw64’, i.e., the LFS interface transparently replaces the old interface. -- Function: int ftw64 (const char *FILENAME, __ftw64_func_t FUNC, int DESCRIPTORS) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is similar to ‘ftw’ but it can work on filesystems with large files. File information is reported using a variable of type ‘struct stat64’ which is passed by reference to the callback function. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ on a 32-bit system this function is available under the name ‘ftw’ and transparently replaces the old implementation. -- Function: int nftw (const char *FILENAME, __nftw_func_t FUNC, int DESCRIPTORS, int FLAG) Preliminary: | MT-Safe cwd | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem fd cwd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘nftw’ function works like the ‘ftw’ functions. They call the callback function FUNC for all items found in the directory FILENAME and below. At most DESCRIPTORS file descriptors are consumed during the ‘nftw’ call. One difference is that the callback function is of a different type. It is of type ‘struct FTW *’ and provides the callback function with the extra information described above. A second difference is that ‘nftw’ takes a fourth argument, which is 0 or a bitwise-OR combination of any of the following values. ‘FTW_PHYS’ While traversing the directory symbolic links are not followed. Instead symbolic links are reported using the ‘FTW_SL’ value for the type parameter to the callback function. If the file referenced by a symbolic link does not exist ‘FTW_SLN’ is returned instead. ‘FTW_MOUNT’ The callback function is only called for items which are on the same mounted filesystem as the directory given by the FILENAME parameter to ‘nftw’. ‘FTW_CHDIR’ If this flag is given the current working directory is changed to the directory of the reported object before the callback function is called. When ‘ntfw’ finally returns the current directory is restored to its original value. ‘FTW_DEPTH’ If this option is specified then all subdirectories and files within them are processed before processing the top directory itself (depth-first processing). This also means the type flag given to the callback function is ‘FTW_DP’ and not ‘FTW_D’. ‘FTW_ACTIONRETVAL’ If this option is specified then return values from callbacks are handled differently. If the callback returns ‘FTW_CONTINUE’, walking continues normally. ‘FTW_STOP’ means walking stops and ‘FTW_STOP’ is returned to the caller. If ‘FTW_SKIP_SUBTREE’ is returned by the callback with ‘FTW_D’ argument, the subtree is skipped and walking continues with next sibling of the directory. If ‘FTW_SKIP_SIBLINGS’ is returned by the callback, all siblings of the current entry are skipped and walking continues in its parent. No other return values should be returned from the callbacks if this option is set. This option is a GNU extension. The return value is computed in the same way as for ‘ftw’. ‘nftw’ returns 0 if no failures occurred and all callback functions returned 0. In case of internal errors, such as memory problems, the return value is -1 and ERRNO is set accordingly. If the return value of a callback invocation was non-zero then that value is returned. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ on a 32-bit system this function is in fact ‘nftw64’, i.e., the LFS interface transparently replaces the old interface. -- Function: int nftw64 (const char *FILENAME, __nftw64_func_t FUNC, int DESCRIPTORS, int FLAG) Preliminary: | MT-Safe cwd | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem fd cwd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is similar to ‘nftw’ but it can work on filesystems with large files. File information is reported using a variable of type ‘struct stat64’ which is passed by reference to the callback function. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ on a 32-bit system this function is available under the name ‘nftw’ and transparently replaces the old implementation.  File: libc.info, Node: Hard Links, Next: Symbolic Links, Prev: Working with Directory Trees, Up: File System Interface 14.4 Hard Links =============== In POSIX systems, one file can have many names at the same time. All of the names are equally real, and no one of them is preferred to the others. To add a name to a file, use the ‘link’ function. (The new name is also called a “hard link” to the file.) Creating a new link to a file does not copy the contents of the file; it simply makes a new name by which the file can be known, in addition to the file’s existing name or names. One file can have names in several directories, so the organization of the file system is not a strict hierarchy or tree. In most implementations, it is not possible to have hard links to the same file in multiple file systems. ‘link’ reports an error if you try to make a hard link to the file from another file system when this cannot be done. The prototype for the ‘link’ function is declared in the header file ‘unistd.h’. -- Function: int link (const char *OLDNAME, const char *NEWNAME) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘link’ function makes a new link to the existing file named by OLDNAME, under the new name NEWNAME. This function returns a value of ‘0’ if it is successful and ‘-1’ on failure. In addition to the usual file name errors (*note File Name Errors::) for both OLDNAME and NEWNAME, the following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EACCES’ You are not allowed to write to the directory in which the new link is to be written. ‘EEXIST’ There is already a file named NEWNAME. If you want to replace this link with a new link, you must remove the old link explicitly first. ‘EMLINK’ There are already too many links to the file named by OLDNAME. (The maximum number of links to a file is ‘LINK_MAX’; see *note Limits for Files::.) ‘ENOENT’ The file named by OLDNAME doesn’t exist. You can’t make a link to a file that doesn’t exist. ‘ENOSPC’ The directory or file system that would contain the new link is full and cannot be extended. ‘EPERM’ On GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd systems and some others, you cannot make links to directories. Many systems allow only privileged users to do so. This error is used to report the problem. ‘EROFS’ The directory containing the new link can’t be modified because it’s on a read-only file system. ‘EXDEV’ The directory specified in NEWNAME is on a different file system than the existing file. ‘EIO’ A hardware error occurred while trying to read or write the to filesystem. -- Function: int linkat (int oldfd, const char *OLDNAME, int newfd, const char *NEWNAME, int flags) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘linkat’ function is analogous to the ‘link’ function, except that it identifies its source and target using a combination of a file descriptor (referring to a directory) and a pathname. If a pathnames is not absolute, it is resolved relative to the corresponding file descriptor. The special file descriptor ‘AT_FDCWD’ denotes the current directory. The FLAGS argument is a combination of the following flags: ‘AT_SYMLINK_FOLLOW’ If the source path identified by OLDFD and OLDNAME is a symbolic link, ‘linkat’ follows the symbolic link and creates a link to its target. If the flag is not set, a link for the symbolic link itself is created; this is not supported by all file systems and ‘linkat’ can fail in this case. ‘AT_EMPTY_PATH’ If this flag is specified, OLDNAME can be an empty string. In this case, a new link to the file denoted by the descriptor OLDFD is created, which may have been opened with ‘O_PATH’ or ‘O_TMPFILE’. This flag is a GNU extension.  File: libc.info, Node: Symbolic Links, Next: Deleting Files, Prev: Hard Links, Up: File System Interface 14.5 Symbolic Links =================== GNU systems support “soft links” or “symbolic links”. This is a kind of “file” that is essentially a pointer to another file name. Unlike hard links, symbolic links can be made to directories or across file systems with no restrictions. You can also make a symbolic link to a name which is not the name of any file. (Opening this link will fail until a file by that name is created.) Likewise, if the symbolic link points to an existing file which is later deleted, the symbolic link continues to point to the same file name even though the name no longer names any file. The reason symbolic links work the way they do is that special things happen when you try to open the link. The ‘open’ function realizes you have specified the name of a link, reads the file name contained in the link, and opens that file name instead. The ‘stat’ function likewise operates on the file that the symbolic link points to, instead of on the link itself. By contrast, other operations such as deleting or renaming the file operate on the link itself. The functions ‘readlink’ and ‘lstat’ also refrain from following symbolic links, because their purpose is to obtain information about the link. ‘link’, the function that makes a hard link, does too. It makes a hard link to the symbolic link, which one rarely wants. Some systems have, for some functions operating on files, a limit on how many symbolic links are followed when resolving a path name. The limit if it exists is published in the ‘sys/param.h’ header file. -- Macro: int MAXSYMLINKS The macro ‘MAXSYMLINKS’ specifies how many symlinks some function will follow before returning ‘ELOOP’. Not all functions behave the same and this value is not the same as that returned for ‘_SC_SYMLOOP’ by ‘sysconf’. In fact, the ‘sysconf’ result can indicate that there is no fixed limit although ‘MAXSYMLINKS’ exists and has a finite value. Prototypes for most of the functions listed in this section are in ‘unistd.h’. -- Function: int symlink (const char *OLDNAME, const char *NEWNAME) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘symlink’ function makes a symbolic link to OLDNAME named NEWNAME. The normal return value from ‘symlink’ is ‘0’. A return value of ‘-1’ indicates an error. In addition to the usual file name syntax errors (*note File Name Errors::), the following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EEXIST’ There is already an existing file named NEWNAME. ‘EROFS’ The file NEWNAME would exist on a read-only file system. ‘ENOSPC’ The directory or file system cannot be extended to make the new link. ‘EIO’ A hardware error occurred while reading or writing data on the disk. -- Function: ssize_t readlink (const char *FILENAME, char *BUFFER, size_t SIZE) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘readlink’ function gets the value of the symbolic link FILENAME. The file name that the link points to is copied into BUFFER. This file name string is _not_ null-terminated; ‘readlink’ normally returns the number of characters copied. The SIZE argument specifies the maximum number of characters to copy, usually the allocation size of BUFFER. If the return value equals SIZE, you cannot tell whether or not there was room to return the entire name. So make a bigger buffer and call ‘readlink’ again. Here is an example: char * readlink_malloc (const char *filename) { int size = 100; char *buffer = NULL; while (1) { buffer = (char *) xrealloc (buffer, size); int nchars = readlink (filename, buffer, size); if (nchars < 0) { free (buffer); return NULL; } if (nchars < size) return buffer; size *= 2; } } A value of ‘-1’ is returned in case of error. In addition to the usual file name errors (*note File Name Errors::), the following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EINVAL’ The named file is not a symbolic link. ‘EIO’ A hardware error occurred while reading or writing data on the disk. In some situations it is desirable to resolve all the symbolic links to get the real name of a file where no prefix names a symbolic link which is followed and no filename in the path is ‘.’ or ‘..’. This is for instance desirable if files have to be compared in which case different names can refer to the same inode. -- Function: char * canonicalize_file_name (const char *NAME) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘canonicalize_file_name’ function returns the absolute name of the file named by NAME which contains no ‘.’, ‘..’ components nor any repeated path separators (‘/’) or symlinks. The result is passed back as the return value of the function in a block of memory allocated with ‘malloc’. If the result is not used anymore the memory should be freed with a call to ‘free’. If any of the path components are missing the function returns a NULL pointer. This is also what is returned if the length of the path reaches or exceeds ‘PATH_MAX’ characters. In any case ‘errno’ is set accordingly. ‘ENAMETOOLONG’ The resulting path is too long. This error only occurs on systems which have a limit on the file name length. ‘EACCES’ At least one of the path components is not readable. ‘ENOENT’ The input file name is empty. ‘ENOENT’ At least one of the path components does not exist. ‘ELOOP’ More than ‘MAXSYMLINKS’ many symlinks have been followed. This function is a GNU extension and is declared in ‘stdlib.h’. The Unix standard includes a similar function which differs from ‘canonicalize_file_name’ in that the user has to provide the buffer where the result is placed in. -- Function: char * realpath (const char *restrict NAME, char *restrict RESOLVED) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. A call to ‘realpath’ where the RESOLVED parameter is ‘NULL’ behaves exactly like ‘canonicalize_file_name’. The function allocates a buffer for the file name and returns a pointer to it. If RESOLVED is not ‘NULL’ it points to a buffer into which the result is copied. It is the callers responsibility to allocate a buffer which is large enough. On systems which define ‘PATH_MAX’ this means the buffer must be large enough for a pathname of this size. For systems without limitations on the pathname length the requirement cannot be met and programs should not call ‘realpath’ with anything but ‘NULL’ for the second parameter. One other difference is that the buffer RESOLVED (if nonzero) will contain the part of the path component which does not exist or is not readable if the function returns ‘NULL’ and ‘errno’ is set to ‘EACCES’ or ‘ENOENT’. This function is declared in ‘stdlib.h’. The advantage of using this function is that it is more widely available. The drawback is that it reports failures for long paths on systems which have no limits on the file name length.  File: libc.info, Node: Deleting Files, Next: Renaming Files, Prev: Symbolic Links, Up: File System Interface 14.6 Deleting Files =================== You can delete a file with ‘unlink’ or ‘remove’. Deletion actually deletes a file name. If this is the file’s only name, then the file is deleted as well. If the file has other remaining names (*note Hard Links::), it remains accessible under those names. -- Function: int unlink (const char *FILENAME) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘unlink’ function deletes the file name FILENAME. If this is a file’s sole name, the file itself is also deleted. (Actually, if any process has the file open when this happens, deletion is postponed until all processes have closed the file.) The function ‘unlink’ is declared in the header file ‘unistd.h’. This function returns ‘0’ on successful completion, and ‘-1’ on error. In addition to the usual file name errors (*note File Name Errors::), the following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EACCES’ Write permission is denied for the directory from which the file is to be removed, or the directory has the sticky bit set and you do not own the file. ‘EBUSY’ This error indicates that the file is being used by the system in such a way that it can’t be unlinked. For example, you might see this error if the file name specifies the root directory or a mount point for a file system. ‘ENOENT’ The file name to be deleted doesn’t exist. ‘EPERM’ On some systems ‘unlink’ cannot be used to delete the name of a directory, or at least can only be used this way by a privileged user. To avoid such problems, use ‘rmdir’ to delete directories. (On GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd systems ‘unlink’ can never delete the name of a directory.) ‘EROFS’ The directory containing the file name to be deleted is on a read-only file system and can’t be modified. -- Function: int rmdir (const char *FILENAME) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘rmdir’ function deletes a directory. The directory must be empty before it can be removed; in other words, it can only contain entries for ‘.’ and ‘..’. In most other respects, ‘rmdir’ behaves like ‘unlink’. There are two additional ‘errno’ error conditions defined for ‘rmdir’: ‘ENOTEMPTY’ ‘EEXIST’ The directory to be deleted is not empty. These two error codes are synonymous; some systems use one, and some use the other. GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd systems always use ‘ENOTEMPTY’. The prototype for this function is declared in the header file ‘unistd.h’. -- Function: int remove (const char *FILENAME) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This is the ISO C function to remove a file. It works like ‘unlink’ for files and like ‘rmdir’ for directories. ‘remove’ is declared in ‘stdio.h’.  File: libc.info, Node: Renaming Files, Next: Creating Directories, Prev: Deleting Files, Up: File System Interface 14.7 Renaming Files =================== The ‘rename’ function is used to change a file’s name. -- Function: int rename (const char *OLDNAME, const char *NEWNAME) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘rename’ function renames the file OLDNAME to NEWNAME. The file formerly accessible under the name OLDNAME is afterwards accessible as NEWNAME instead. (If the file had any other names aside from OLDNAME, it continues to have those names.) The directory containing the name NEWNAME must be on the same file system as the directory containing the name OLDNAME. One special case for ‘rename’ is when OLDNAME and NEWNAME are two names for the same file. The consistent way to handle this case is to delete OLDNAME. However, in this case POSIX requires that ‘rename’ do nothing and report success—which is inconsistent. We don’t know what your operating system will do. If OLDNAME is not a directory, then any existing file named NEWNAME is removed during the renaming operation. However, if NEWNAME is the name of a directory, ‘rename’ fails in this case. If OLDNAME is a directory, then either NEWNAME must not exist or it must name a directory that is empty. In the latter case, the existing directory named NEWNAME is deleted first. The name NEWNAME must not specify a subdirectory of the directory ‘oldname’ which is being renamed. One useful feature of ‘rename’ is that the meaning of NEWNAME changes “atomically” from any previously existing file by that name to its new meaning (i.e., the file that was called OLDNAME). There is no instant at which NEWNAME is non-existent “in between” the old meaning and the new meaning. If there is a system crash during the operation, it is possible for both names to still exist; but NEWNAME will always be intact if it exists at all. If ‘rename’ fails, it returns ‘-1’. In addition to the usual file name errors (*note File Name Errors::), the following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EACCES’ One of the directories containing NEWNAME or OLDNAME refuses write permission; or NEWNAME and OLDNAME are directories and write permission is refused for one of them. ‘EBUSY’ A directory named by OLDNAME or NEWNAME is being used by the system in a way that prevents the renaming from working. This includes directories that are mount points for filesystems, and directories that are the current working directories of processes. ‘ENOTEMPTY’ ‘EEXIST’ The directory NEWNAME isn’t empty. GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd systems always return ‘ENOTEMPTY’ for this, but some other systems return ‘EEXIST’. ‘EINVAL’ OLDNAME is a directory that contains NEWNAME. ‘EISDIR’ NEWNAME is a directory but the OLDNAME isn’t. ‘EMLINK’ The parent directory of NEWNAME would have too many links (entries). ‘ENOENT’ The file OLDNAME doesn’t exist. ‘ENOSPC’ The directory that would contain NEWNAME has no room for another entry, and there is no space left in the file system to expand it. ‘EROFS’ The operation would involve writing to a directory on a read-only file system. ‘EXDEV’ The two file names NEWNAME and OLDNAME are on different file systems.  File: libc.info, Node: Creating Directories, Next: File Attributes, Prev: Renaming Files, Up: File System Interface 14.8 Creating Directories ========================= Directories are created with the ‘mkdir’ function. (There is also a shell command ‘mkdir’ which does the same thing.) -- Function: int mkdir (const char *FILENAME, mode_t MODE) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘mkdir’ function creates a new, empty directory with name FILENAME. The argument MODE specifies the file permissions for the new directory file. *Note Permission Bits::, for more information about this. A return value of ‘0’ indicates successful completion, and ‘-1’ indicates failure. In addition to the usual file name syntax errors (*note File Name Errors::), the following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘EACCES’ Write permission is denied for the parent directory in which the new directory is to be added. ‘EEXIST’ A file named FILENAME already exists. ‘EMLINK’ The parent directory has too many links (entries). Well-designed file systems never report this error, because they permit more links than your disk could possibly hold. However, you must still take account of the possibility of this error, as it could result from network access to a file system on another machine. ‘ENOSPC’ The file system doesn’t have enough room to create the new directory. ‘EROFS’ The parent directory of the directory being created is on a read-only file system and cannot be modified. To use this function, your program should include the header file ‘sys/stat.h’.  File: libc.info, Node: File Attributes, Next: Making Special Files, Prev: Creating Directories, Up: File System Interface 14.9 File Attributes ==================== When you issue an ‘ls -l’ shell command on a file, it gives you information about the size of the file, who owns it, when it was last modified, etc. These are called the “file attributes”, and are associated with the file itself and not a particular one of its names. This section contains information about how you can inquire about and modify the attributes of a file. * Menu: * Attribute Meanings:: The names of the file attributes, and what their values mean. * Reading Attributes:: How to read the attributes of a file. * Testing File Type:: Distinguishing ordinary files, directories, links... * File Owner:: How ownership for new files is determined, and how to change it. * Permission Bits:: How information about a file’s access mode is stored. * Access Permission:: How the system decides who can access a file. * Setting Permissions:: How permissions for new files are assigned, and how to change them. * Testing File Access:: How to find out if your process can access a file. * File Times:: About the time attributes of a file. * File Size:: Manually changing the size of a file. * Storage Allocation:: Allocate backing storage for files.  File: libc.info, Node: Attribute Meanings, Next: Reading Attributes, Up: File Attributes 14.9.1 The meaning of the File Attributes ----------------------------------------- When you read the attributes of a file, they come back in a structure called ‘struct stat’. This section describes the names of the attributes, their data types, and what they mean. For the functions to read the attributes of a file, see *note Reading Attributes::. The header file ‘sys/stat.h’ declares all the symbols defined in this section. -- Data Type: struct stat The ‘stat’ structure type is used to return information about the attributes of a file. It contains at least the following members: ‘mode_t st_mode’ Specifies the mode of the file. This includes file type information (*note Testing File Type::) and the file permission bits (*note Permission Bits::). ‘ino_t st_ino’ The file serial number, which distinguishes this file from all other files on the same device. ‘dev_t st_dev’ Identifies the device containing the file. The ‘st_ino’ and ‘st_dev’, taken together, uniquely identify the file. The ‘st_dev’ value is not necessarily consistent across reboots or system crashes, however. ‘nlink_t st_nlink’ The number of hard links to the file. This count keeps track of how many directories have entries for this file. If the count is ever decremented to zero, then the file itself is discarded as soon as no process still holds it open. Symbolic links are not counted in the total. ‘uid_t st_uid’ The user ID of the file’s owner. *Note File Owner::. ‘gid_t st_gid’ The group ID of the file. *Note File Owner::. ‘off_t st_size’ This specifies the size of a regular file in bytes. For files that are really devices this field isn’t usually meaningful. For symbolic links this specifies the length of the file name the link refers to. ‘time_t st_atime’ This is the last access time for the file. *Note File Times::. ‘unsigned long int st_atime_usec’ This is the fractional part of the last access time for the file. *Note File Times::. ‘time_t st_mtime’ This is the time of the last modification to the contents of the file. *Note File Times::. ‘unsigned long int st_mtime_usec’ This is the fractional part of the time of the last modification to the contents of the file. *Note File Times::. ‘time_t st_ctime’ This is the time of the last modification to the attributes of the file. *Note File Times::. ‘unsigned long int st_ctime_usec’ This is the fractional part of the time of the last modification to the attributes of the file. *Note File Times::. ‘blkcnt_t st_blocks’ This is the amount of disk space that the file occupies, measured in units of 512-byte blocks. The number of disk blocks is not strictly proportional to the size of the file, for two reasons: the file system may use some blocks for internal record keeping; and the file may be sparse—it may have “holes” which contain zeros but do not actually take up space on the disk. You can tell (approximately) whether a file is sparse by comparing this value with ‘st_size’, like this: (st.st_blocks * 512 < st.st_size) This test is not perfect because a file that is just slightly sparse might not be detected as sparse at all. For practical applications, this is not a problem. ‘unsigned int st_blksize’ The optimal block size for reading or writing this file, in bytes. You might use this size for allocating the buffer space for reading or writing the file. (This is unrelated to ‘st_blocks’.) The extensions for the Large File Support (LFS) require, even on 32-bit machines, types which can handle file sizes up to 2^63. Therefore a new definition of ‘struct stat’ is necessary. -- Data Type: struct stat64 The members of this type are the same and have the same names as those in ‘struct stat’. The only difference is that the members ‘st_ino’, ‘st_size’, and ‘st_blocks’ have a different type to support larger values. ‘mode_t st_mode’ Specifies the mode of the file. This includes file type information (*note Testing File Type::) and the file permission bits (*note Permission Bits::). ‘ino64_t st_ino’ The file serial number, which distinguishes this file from all other files on the same device. ‘dev_t st_dev’ Identifies the device containing the file. The ‘st_ino’ and ‘st_dev’, taken together, uniquely identify the file. The ‘st_dev’ value is not necessarily consistent across reboots or system crashes, however. ‘nlink_t st_nlink’ The number of hard links to the file. This count keeps track of how many directories have entries for this file. If the count is ever decremented to zero, then the file itself is discarded as soon as no process still holds it open. Symbolic links are not counted in the total. ‘uid_t st_uid’ The user ID of the file’s owner. *Note File Owner::. ‘gid_t st_gid’ The group ID of the file. *Note File Owner::. ‘off64_t st_size’ This specifies the size of a regular file in bytes. For files that are really devices this field isn’t usually meaningful. For symbolic links this specifies the length of the file name the link refers to. ‘time_t st_atime’ This is the last access time for the file. *Note File Times::. ‘unsigned long int st_atime_usec’ This is the fractional part of the last access time for the file. *Note File Times::. ‘time_t st_mtime’ This is the time of the last modification to the contents of the file. *Note File Times::. ‘unsigned long int st_mtime_usec’ This is the fractional part of the time of the last modification to the contents of the file. *Note File Times::. ‘time_t st_ctime’ This is the time of the last modification to the attributes of the file. *Note File Times::. ‘unsigned long int st_ctime_usec’ This is the fractional part of the time of the last modification to the attributes of the file. *Note File Times::. ‘blkcnt64_t st_blocks’ This is the amount of disk space that the file occupies, measured in units of 512-byte blocks. ‘unsigned int st_blksize’ The optimal block size for reading of writing this file, in bytes. You might use this size for allocating the buffer space for reading of writing the file. (This is unrelated to ‘st_blocks’.) Some of the file attributes have special data type names which exist specifically for those attributes. (They are all aliases for well-known integer types that you know and love.) These typedef names are defined in the header file ‘sys/types.h’ as well as in ‘sys/stat.h’. Here is a list of them. -- Data Type: mode_t This is an integer data type used to represent file modes. In the GNU C Library, this is an unsigned type no narrower than ‘unsigned int’. -- Data Type: ino_t This is an unsigned integer type used to represent file serial numbers. (In Unix jargon, these are sometimes called “inode numbers”.) In the GNU C Library, this type is no narrower than ‘unsigned int’. If the source is compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this type is transparently replaced by ‘ino64_t’. -- Data Type: ino64_t This is an unsigned integer type used to represent file serial numbers for the use in LFS. In the GNU C Library, this type is no narrower than ‘unsigned int’. When compiling with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this type is available under the name ‘ino_t’. -- Data Type: dev_t This is an arithmetic data type used to represent file device numbers. In the GNU C Library, this is an integer type no narrower than ‘int’. -- Data Type: nlink_t This is an integer type used to represent file link counts. -- Data Type: blkcnt_t This is a signed integer type used to represent block counts. In the GNU C Library, this type is no narrower than ‘int’. If the source is compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this type is transparently replaced by ‘blkcnt64_t’. -- Data Type: blkcnt64_t This is a signed integer type used to represent block counts for the use in LFS. In the GNU C Library, this type is no narrower than ‘int’. When compiling with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this type is available under the name ‘blkcnt_t’.  File: libc.info, Node: Reading Attributes, Next: Testing File Type, Prev: Attribute Meanings, Up: File Attributes 14.9.2 Reading the Attributes of a File --------------------------------------- To examine the attributes of files, use the functions ‘stat’, ‘fstat’ and ‘lstat’. They return the attribute information in a ‘struct stat’ object. All three functions are declared in the header file ‘sys/stat.h’. -- Function: int stat (const char *FILENAME, struct stat *BUF) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘stat’ function returns information about the attributes of the file named by FILENAME in the structure pointed to by BUF. If FILENAME is the name of a symbolic link, the attributes you get describe the file that the link points to. If the link points to a nonexistent file name, then ‘stat’ fails reporting a nonexistent file. The return value is ‘0’ if the operation is successful, or ‘-1’ on failure. In addition to the usual file name errors (*note File Name Errors::, the following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for this function: ‘ENOENT’ The file named by FILENAME doesn’t exist. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is in fact ‘stat64’ since the LFS interface transparently replaces the normal implementation. -- Function: int stat64 (const char *FILENAME, struct stat64 *BUF) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is similar to ‘stat’ but it is also able to work on files larger than 2^31 bytes on 32-bit systems. To be able to do this the result is stored in a variable of type ‘struct stat64’ to which BUF must point. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is available under the name ‘stat’ and so transparently replaces the interface for small files on 32-bit machines. -- Function: int fstat (int FILEDES, struct stat *BUF) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘fstat’ function is like ‘stat’, except that it takes an open file descriptor as an argument instead of a file name. *Note Low-Level I/O::. Like ‘stat’, ‘fstat’ returns ‘0’ on success and ‘-1’ on failure. The following ‘errno’ error conditions are defined for ‘fstat’: ‘EBADF’ The FILEDES argument is not a valid file descriptor. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is in fact ‘fstat64’ since the LFS interface transparently replaces the normal implementation. -- Function: int fstat64 (int FILEDES, struct stat64 *BUF) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is similar to ‘fstat’ but is able to work on large files on 32-bit platforms. For large files the file descriptor FILEDES should be obtained by ‘open64’ or ‘creat64’. The BUF pointer points to a variable of type ‘struct stat64’ which is able to represent the larger values. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is available under the name ‘fstat’ and so transparently replaces the interface for small files on 32-bit machines. -- Function: int lstat (const char *FILENAME, struct stat *BUF) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. The ‘lstat’ function is like ‘stat’, except that it does not follow symbolic links. If FILENAME is the name of a symbolic link, ‘lstat’ returns information about the link itself; otherwise ‘lstat’ works like ‘stat’. *Note Symbolic Links::. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is in fact ‘lstat64’ since the LFS interface transparently replaces the normal implementation. -- Function: int lstat64 (const char *FILENAME, struct stat64 *BUF) Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::. This function is similar to ‘lstat’ but it is also able to work on files larger than 2^31 bytes on 32-bit systems. To be able to do this the result is stored in a variable of type ‘struct stat64’ to which BUF must point. When the sources are compiled with ‘_FILE_OFFSET_BITS == 64’ this function is available under the name ‘lstat’ and so transparently replaces the interface for small files on 32-bit machines.