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CONFSTR

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (3)
Updated: 2017-09-15
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NAME

confstr - get configuration dependent string variables

SYNOPSIS

#include <unistd.h>

size_t confstr(int name, char *buf, size_t len);

Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

confstr(): _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 2 || _XOPEN_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION

confstr() gets the value of configuration-dependent string variables.

The name argument is the system variable to be queried. The following variables are supported:

_CS_GNU_LIBC_VERSION (GNU C library only; since glibc 2.3.2): A string which identifies the GNU C library version on this system (e.g., "glibc 2.3.4").
_CS_GNU_LIBPTHREAD_VERSION (GNU C library only; since glibc 2.3.2): A string which identifies the POSIX implementation supplied by this C library (e.g., "NPTL 2.3.4" or "linuxthreads-0.10").
_CS_PATH: A value for the PATH variable which indicates where all the POSIX.2 standard utilities can be found.

If buf is not NULL and len is not zero, confstr() copies the value of the string to buf truncated to len - 1 bytes if necessary, with a null byte (aq\0aq) as terminator. This can be detected by comparing the return value of confstr() against len.

If len is zero and buf is NULL, confstr() just returns the value as defined below.

RETURN VALUE

If name is a valid configuration variable, confstr() returns the number of bytes (including the terminating null byte) that would be required to hold the entire value of that variable. This value may be greater than len, which means that the value in buf is truncated.

If name is a valid configuration variable, but that variable does not have a value, then confstr() returns 0. If name does not correspond to a valid configuration variable, confstr() returns 0, and errno is set to EINVAL.

ERRORS

EINVAL: The value of name is invalid.

ATTRIBUTES

For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).

Interface	Attribute	Value
confstr()	Thread safety	MT-Safe

CONFORMING TO

POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008.

EXAMPLE

The following code fragment determines the path where to find the POSIX.2 system utilities:

char *pathbuf; size_t n;

n = confstr(_CS_PATH, NULL, (size_t) 0); pathbuf = malloc(n); if (pathbuf == NULL)
abort(); confstr(_CS_PATH, pathbuf, n);

COLOPHON

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