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GETPROGNAME(3) Library Functions Manual GETPROGNAME(3)

NAME

getprogname, setprognameget or set the program name

LIBRARY

library “libbsd”

SYNOPSIS

#include <bsd/stdlib.h>

const char *
getprogname(void);

void
setprogname(const char *progname);

DESCRIPTION

The () and setprogname() functions manipulate the name of the current program. They are used by error-reporting routines to produce consistent output.

The () function returns the name of the program. If the name has not been set yet, it will return NULL.

The () function sets the name of the program to be the last component of the progname argument. Since a pointer to the given string is kept as the program name, it should not be modified for the rest of the program's lifetime.

In FreeBSD, the name of the program is set by the start-up code that is run before (); thus, running setprogname() is not necessary. Programs that desire maximum portability should still call it; on another operating system, these functions may be implemented in a portability library. Calling setprogname() allows the aforementioned library to learn the program name without modifications to the start-up code.

SEE ALSO

err(3), setproctitle(3)

HISTORY

These functions first appeared in NetBSD 1.6, and made their way into FreeBSD 4.4.

May 1, 2001 Debian