readlink(2) - NetBSD Manual Pages

READLINK(2)               NetBSD System Calls Manual               READLINK(2)


NAME
readlink - read value of a symbolic link
LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h> int readlink(const char *path, char *buf, size_t bufsiz);
DESCRIPTION
readlink() places the contents of the symbolic link path in the buffer buf, which has size bufsiz. readlink() does not append a NUL character to buf.
RETURN VALUES
The call returns the count of characters placed in the buffer if it suc- ceeds, or a -1 if an error occurs, placing the error code in the global variable errno.
EXAMPLES
A typical use is illustrated in the following piece of code which reads the contents of a symbolic link named /symbolic/link and stores them as null-terminated string: #include <limits.h> #include <unistd.h> char buf[PATH_MAX]; int len; if ((len = readlink("/symbolic/link", buf, sizeof(buf)-1)) == -1) error handling; buf[len] = '\0';
ERRORS
readlink() will fail if: [ENOTDIR] A component of the path prefix is not a directory. [ENAMETOOLONG] A component of a pathname exceeded {NAME_MAX} charac- ters, or an entire path name exceeded {PATH_MAX} char- acters. [ENOENT] The named file does not exist. [EACCES] Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix. [ELOOP] Too many symbolic links were encountered in translat- ing the pathname. [EINVAL] The named file is not a symbolic link. [EIO] An I/O error occurred while reading from the file sys- tem. [EFAULT] buf extends outside the process's allocated address space.
SEE ALSO
lstat(2), stat(2), symlink(2), symlink(7)
HISTORY
The readlink() function call appeared in 4.2BSD. NetBSD 2.0 June 4, 1993 NetBSD 2.0

Powered by man-cgi (2024-08-26). Maintained for NetBSD by Kimmo Suominen. Based on man-cgi by Panagiotis Christias.