.\" Copyright 1995 Jim Van Zandt <jrv@vanzandt.mv.com>

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.\" Corrected prototype and include, aeb, 990927

.TH LSEARCH 3  2017-09-15 "GNU" "Linux Programmer's Manual"

.SH NAME

lfind, lsearch \- linear search of an array

.SH SYNOPSIS

.nf

.B #include <search.h>

.PP

.BI "void *lfind(const void *" key ", const void *" base ", size_t *" nmemb ,

.BI "         size_t " size ", int(*" compar ")(const void *, const void *));"

.PP

.BI "void *lsearch(const void *" key ", void *" base ", size_t *" nmemb ,

.BI "         size_t " size ", int(*" compar ")(const void *, const void *));"

.fi

.SH DESCRIPTION

.BR lfind ()

and

.BR lsearch ()

perform a linear search for

.I key

in the array

.IR base

which has

.I *nmemb

elements of

.I size

bytes each.

The comparison function referenced by

.I compar

is expected to have two arguments which point to the

.I key

object and to an array member, in that order, and which

returns zero if the

.I key

object matches the array member, and

nonzero otherwise.

.PP

If

.BR lsearch ()

does not find a matching element, then the

.I key

object is inserted at the end of the table, and

.I *nmemb

is

incremented.

In particular, one should know that a matching element

exists, or that more room is available.

.SH RETURN VALUE

.BR lfind ()

returns a pointer to a matching member of the array, or

NULL if no match is found.

.BR lsearch ()

returns a pointer to

a matching member of the array, or to the newly added member if no

match is found.

.SH ATTRIBUTES

For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see

.BR attributes (7).

.TS

allbox;

lbw18 lb lb

l l l.

Interface	Attribute	Value

T{

.BR lfind (),

.BR lsearch ()

T}	Thread safety	MT-Safe

.TE

.sp 1

.SH CONFORMING TO

POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SVr4, 4.3BSD.

Present in libc since libc-4.6.27.

.SH BUGS

The naming is unfortunate.

.SH SEE ALSO

.BR bsearch (3),

.BR hsearch (3),

.BR tsearch (3)

.SH COLOPHON

This page is part of release 4.15 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/.