table of contents
READLINK(2) | System Calls Manual | READLINK(2) |
NAME¶
readlink
,
readlinkat
— read value of a
symbolic link
LIBRARY¶
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS¶
#include
<unistd.h>
ssize_t
readlink
(const
char *restrict path, char
*restrict buf, size_t
bufsiz);
ssize_t
readlinkat
(int fd,
const char *restrict path, char
*restrict buf, size_t bufsize);
DESCRIPTION¶
The
readlink
()
system call places the contents of the symbolic link
path in the buffer buf, which
has size bufsiz. The
readlink
() system call does not append a
NUL
character to buf.
The
readlinkat
()
system call is equivalent to readlink
() except in
the case where path specifies a relative path. In this
case the symbolic link whose content is read relative to the directory
associated with the file descriptor fd instead of the
current working directory. If readlinkat
() is passed
the special value AT_FDCWD
in the
fd parameter, the current working directory is used
and the behavior is identical to a call to
readlink
().
RETURN VALUES¶
The call returns the count of characters placed in the buffer if it succeeds, or a -1 if an error occurs, placing the error code in the global variable errno.
ERRORS¶
The readlink
() system call will fail
if:
- [
ENOTDIR
] - A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
- [
ENAMETOOLONG
] - A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.
- [
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 translating the pathname.
- [
EINVAL
] - The named file is not a symbolic link.
- [
EIO
] - An I/O error occurred while reading from the file system.
- [
EFAULT
] - The buf argument extends outside the process's allocated address space.
In addition to the errors returned by the
readlink
(), the readlinkat
()
may fail if:
SEE ALSO¶
STANDARDS¶
The readlinkat
() system call follows The
Open Group Extended API Set 2 specification.
HISTORY¶
The readlink
() system call appeared in
4.2BSD. The readlinkat
()
system call appeared in FreeBSD 8.0.
April 10, 2008 | Debian |