readlink
Hurricane Electric Internet Services
NAME
readlink - read value of a symbolic link
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 succeeds, or a -1 if an error occurs, placing
the error code in the global variable errno.
ERRORS
ENOTDIR A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
EINVAL The pathname contains a character with the high-
order bit set.
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 per-
mission is denied for a component of the path pre-
fix.
ELOOP Too many symbolic links were encountered in trans-
lating the pathname.
EINVAL The named file is not a symbolic link.
EIO An I/O error occurred while reading from the file
system.
EFAULT Buf extends outside the process's allocated
address space.
HISTORY
The readlink function call appeared in BSD 4.2.
SEE ALSO
stat(2), lstat(2), symlink(2)
Hurricane Electric Internet Services
Copyright (C) 1998
Hurricane Electric.
All Rights Reserved.