.\" Copyright 2001 John Levon <moz@compsoc.man.ac.uk>
.\" Based on mkstemp(3), Copyright 1993 David Metcalfe (david@prism.demon.co.uk)
.\" and GNU libc documentation
.\"
.\" %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM)
.\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
.\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
.\" preserved on all copies.
.\"
.\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
.\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
.\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
.\" permission notice identical to this one.
.\"
.\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
.\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date.  The author(s) assume no
.\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
.\" the use of the information contained herein.  The author(s) may not
.\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
.\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
.\" professionally.
.\"
.\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
.\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
.\" %%%LICENSE_END
.TH MKDTEMP 3  2016-07-17 "GNU" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
mkdtemp \- create a unique temporary directory
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #include <stdlib.h>
.PP
.BI "char *mkdtemp(char *" template );
.fi
.PP
.in -4n
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
.BR feature_test_macros (7)):
.in
.PP
.BR mkdtemp ():
.br
.ad l
.RS 4
.PD 0
/* Since glibc 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
.br
|| /* Glibc 2.19 and earlier: */ _BSD_SOURCE
.br
|| /* Since glibc 2.10: */
_POSIX_C_SOURCE\ >=\ 200809L
.ad
.PD
.RE
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.BR mkdtemp ()
function generates a uniquely named temporary
directory from \fItemplate\fP.
The last six characters of \fItemplate\fP
must be XXXXXX and these are replaced with a string that makes the
directory name unique.
The directory is then created with
permissions 0700.
Since it will be modified,
.I template
must not be a string constant, but should be declared as a character array.
.SH RETURN VALUE
The
.BR mkdtemp ()
function returns a pointer to the modified template
string on success, and NULL on failure, in which case
.I errno
is set appropriately.
.SH ERRORS
.TP
.B EINVAL
The last six characters of \fItemplate\fP were not XXXXXX.
Now \fItemplate\fP is unchanged.
.PP
Also see
.BR mkdir (2)
for other possible values for \fIerrno\fP.
.SH VERSIONS
Available since glibc 2.1.91.
.SH ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
.BR attributes (7).
.TS
allbox;
lb lb lb
l l l.
Interface	Attribute	Value
T{
.BR mkdtemp ()
T}	Thread safety	MT-Safe
.TE
.SH CONFORMING TO
POSIX.1-2008.
This function is present on the BSDs.
.\" As at 2006, this function is being considered for a revision of POSIX.1
.\" Also in NetBSD 1.4.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR mktemp (1),
.BR mkdir (2),
.BR mkstemp (3),
.BR mktemp (3),
.BR tempnam (3),
.BR tmpfile (3),
.BR tmpnam (3)
.SH COLOPHON
This page is part of release 4.16 of the Linux
.I man-pages
project.
A description of the project,
information about reporting bugs,
and the latest version of this page,
can be found at
\%https://www.kernel.org/doc/man\-pages/.