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.TH FPATHCONF "3P" 2013 "IEEE/The Open Group" "POSIX Programmer's Manual"
.SH PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.
The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult
the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior),
or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

.SH NAME
fpathconf,
pathconf
\(em get configurable pathname variables
.SH SYNOPSIS
.LP
.nf
#include <unistd.h>
.P
long fpathconf(int \fIfildes\fP, int \fIname\fP);
long pathconf(const char *\fIpath\fP, int \fIname\fP);
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
\fIfpathconf\fR()
and
\fIpathconf\fR()
functions shall determine the current value of a configurable limit or
option (\fIvariable\fP) that is associated with a file or directory.
.P
For
\fIpathconf\fR(),
the
.IR path
argument points to the pathname of a file or directory.
.P
For
\fIfpathconf\fR(),
the
.IR fildes
argument is an open file descriptor.
.P
The
.IR name
argument represents the variable to be queried relative to that file or
directory. Implementations shall support all of the variables listed in
the following table and may support others. The variables in the
following table come from
.IR <limits.h> 
or
.IR <unistd.h> 
and the symbolic constants, defined in
.IR <unistd.h> ,
are the corresponding values used for
.IR name .
.TS
center box tab(!);
cB | cB | cB
l | l | l.
Variable!Value of \fIname\fP!Requirements
_
{FILESIZEBITS}!_PC_FILESIZEBITS!4,\|7
{LINK_MAX}!_PC_LINK_MAX!1
{MAX_CANON}!_PC_MAX_CANON!2
{MAX_INPUT}!_PC_MAX_INPUT!2
{NAME_MAX}!_PC_NAME_MAX!3,\|4
{PATH_MAX}!_PC_PATH_MAX!4,\|5
{PIPE_BUF}!_PC_PIPE_BUF!6
{POSIX2_SYMLINKS}!_PC_2_SYMLINKS!4
{POSIX_ALLOC_SIZE_MIN}!_PC_ALLOC_SIZE_MIN!10
{POSIX_REC_INCR_XFER_SIZE}!_PC_REC_INCR_XFER_SIZE!10
{POSIX_REC_MAX_XFER_SIZE}!_PC_REC_MAX_XFER_SIZE!10
{POSIX_REC_MIN_XFER_SIZE}!_PC_REC_MIN_XFER_SIZE!10
{POSIX_REC_XFER_ALIGN}!_PC_REC_XFER_ALIGN!10
{SYMLINK_MAX}!_PC_SYMLINK_MAX!4,\|9
_POSIX_CHOWN_RESTRICTED!_PC_CHOWN_RESTRICTED!7
_POSIX_NO_TRUNC!_PC_NO_TRUNC!3,\|4
_POSIX_VDISABLE!_PC_VDISABLE!2
_POSIX_ASYNC_IO!_PC_ASYNC_IO!8
_POSIX_PRIO_IO!_PC_PRIO_IO!8
_POSIX_SYNC_IO!_PC_SYNC_IO!8
_POSIX_TIMESTAMP_RESOLUTION!_PC_TIMESTAMP_RESOLUTION!1
.TE
.SS "Requirements"
.IP " 1." 4
If
.IR path
or
.IR fildes
refers to a directory, the value returned shall apply to the directory
itself.
.IP " 2." 4
If
.IR path
or
.IR fildes
does not refer to a terminal file, it is unspecified whether an
implementation supports an association of the variable name with the
specified file.
.IP " 3." 4
If
.IR path
or
.IR fildes
refers to a directory, the value returned shall apply to filenames
within the directory.
.IP " 4." 4
If
.IR path
or
.IR fildes
does not refer to a directory, it is unspecified whether an
implementation supports an association of the variable name with the
specified file.
.IP " 5." 4
If
.IR path
or
.IR fildes
refers to a directory, the value returned shall be the maximum length
of a relative pathname that would not cross any mount points when the
specified directory is the working directory.
.IP " 6." 4
If
.IR path
refers to a FIFO, or
.IR fildes
refers to a pipe or FIFO, the value returned shall apply to the
referenced object. If
.IR path
or
.IR fildes
refers to a directory, the value returned shall apply to any FIFO that
exists or can be created within the directory. If
.IR path
or
.IR fildes
refers to any other type of file, it is unspecified whether an
implementation supports an association of the variable name with the
specified file.
.IP " 7." 4
If
.IR path
or
.IR fildes
refers to a directory, the value returned shall apply to any files,
other than directories, that exist or can be created within the
directory.
.IP " 8." 4
If
.IR path
or
.IR fildes
refers to a directory, it is unspecified whether an implementation
supports an association of the variable name with the specified file.
.IP " 9." 4
If
.IR path
or
.IR fildes
refers to a directory, the value returned shall be the maximum length
of the string that a symbolic link in that directory can contain.
.IP 10. 4
If
.IR path
or
.IR fildes
des does not refer to a regular file, it is unspecified whether an
implementation supports an association of the variable name with the
specified file. If an implementation supports such an association for
other than a regular file, the value returned is unspecified.
.SH "RETURN VALUE"
If
.IR name
is an invalid value, both
\fIpathconf\fR()
and
\fIfpathconf\fR()
shall return \(mi1 and set
.IR errno
to indicate the error.
.P
If the variable corresponding to
.IR name
is described in
.IR <limits.h> 
as a maximum or minimum value and the variable has no limit for the
path or file descriptor, both
\fIpathconf\fR()
and
\fIfpathconf\fR()
shall return \(mi1 without changing
.IR errno .
Note that indefinite limits do not imply infinite limits; see
.IR <limits.h> .
.P
If the implementation needs to use
.IR path
to determine the value of
.IR name
and the implementation does not support the association of
.IR name
with the file specified by
.IR path ,
or if the process did not have appropriate privileges to query the
file specified by
.IR path ,
or
.IR path
does not exist,
\fIpathconf\fR()
shall return \(mi1 and set
.IR errno
to indicate the error.
.P
If the implementation needs to use
.IR fildes
to determine the value of
.IR name
and the implementation does not support the association of
.IR name
with the file specified by
.IR fildes ,
or if
.IR fildes
is an invalid file descriptor,
\fIfpathconf\fR()
shall return \(mi1 and set
.IR errno
to indicate the error.
.P
Otherwise,
\fIpathconf\fR()
or
\fIfpathconf\fR()
shall return the current variable value for the file or directory
without changing
.IR errno .
The value returned shall not be more restrictive than the corresponding
value available to the application when it was compiled with the
implementation's
.IR <limits.h> 
or
.IR <unistd.h> .
.P
If the variable corresponding to
.IR name
is dependent on an unsupported option, the results are unspecified.
.SH ERRORS
The
\fIpathconf\fR()
function shall fail if:
.TP
.BR EINVAL
The value of
.IR name
is not valid.
.TP
.BR ELOOP
A loop exists in symbolic links encountered during resolution of the
.IR path
argument.
.TP
.BR EOVERFLOW
The value of
.IR name
is _PC_TIMESTAMP_RESOLUTION and the resolution is larger than
{LONG_MAX}.
.br
.P
The
\fIpathconf\fR()
function may fail if:
.TP
.BR EACCES
Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.
.TP
.BR EINVAL
The implementation does not support an association of the variable
.IR name
with the specified file.
.TP
.BR ELOOP
More than
{SYMLOOP_MAX}
symbolic links were encountered during resolution of the
.IR path
argument.
.TP
.BR ENAMETOOLONG
.br
The length of a component of a pathname is longer than
{NAME_MAX}.
.TP
.BR ENAMETOOLONG
.br
The length of a pathname exceeds
{PATH_MAX},
or pathname resolution of a symbolic link produced an intermediate
result with a length that exceeds
{PATH_MAX}.
.TP
.BR ENOENT
A component of
.IR path
does not name an existing file or
.IR path
is an empty string.
.TP
.BR ENOTDIR
A component of the path prefix names an existing file that is neither
a directory nor a symbolic link to a directory, or the
.IR path
argument contains at least one non-\c
<slash>
character and ends with one or more trailing
<slash>
characters and the last pathname component names an existing file
that is neither a directory nor a symbolic link to a directory.
.P
The
\fIfpathconf\fR()
function shall fail if:
.TP
.BR EINVAL
The value of
.IR name
is not valid.
.TP
.BR EOVERFLOW
The value of
.IR name
is _PC_TIMESTAMP_RESOLUTION and the resolution is larger than
{LONG_MAX}.
.P
The
\fIfpathconf\fR()
function may fail if:
.TP
.BR EBADF
The
.IR fildes
argument is not a valid file descriptor.
.TP
.BR EINVAL
The implementation does not support an association of the variable
.IR name
with the specified file.
.LP
.IR "The following sections are informative."
.SH EXAMPLES
None.
.SH "APPLICATION USAGE"
Application developers should check whether an option, such as
_POSIX_ADVISORY_INFO, is supported prior to obtaining and using values
for related variables such as
{POSIX_ALLOC_SIZE_MIN}.
.SH RATIONALE
The
\fIpathconf\fR()
function was proposed immediately after the
\fIsysconf\fR()
function when it was realized that some configurable values may differ
across file system, directory, or device boundaries.
.P
For example,
{NAME_MAX}
frequently changes between System V and
BSD-based file systems; System V uses a maximum of 14, BSD 255. On an
implementation that provides both types of file systems, an application
would be forced to limit all pathname components to 14 bytes, as this
would be the value specified in
.IR <limits.h> 
on such a system.
.P
Therefore, various useful values can be queried on any pathname or file
descriptor, assuming that appropriate privileges
are in place.
.P
The value returned for the variable
{PATH_MAX}
indicates the longest relative pathname that could be given if the
specified directory is the current working directory of the process. A
process may not always be able to generate a name that long and use it
if a subdirectory in the pathname crosses into a more restrictive file
system. Note that implementations are allowed to accept pathnames
longer than
{PATH_MAX}
bytes long, but are not allowed to return pathnames longer than this
unless the user specifies a larger buffer using a function that provides
a buffer size argument.
.P
The value returned for the variable _POSIX_CHOWN_RESTRICTED
also applies to directories that do not have file systems mounted on
them. The value may change when crossing a mount point, so
applications that need to know should check for each directory. (An
even easier check is to try the
\fIchown\fR()
function and look for an error in case it happens.)
.P
Unlike the values returned by
\fIsysconf\fR(),
the pathname-oriented variables are potentially more volatile and are
not guaranteed to remain constant throughout the lifetime of the process.
For example, in between two calls to
\fIpathconf\fR(),
the file system in question may have been unmounted and remounted with
different characteristics.
.P
Also note that most of the errors are optional. If one of the
variables always has the same value on an implementation, the
implementation need not look at
.IR path
or
.IR fildes
to return that value and is, therefore, not required to detect any of
the errors except the meaning of
.BR [EINVAL] 
that indicates that the value of
.IR name
is not valid for that variable.
.P
If the value of any of the limits is unspecified (logically
infinite), they will not be defined in
.IR <limits.h> 
and the
\fIpathconf\fR()
and
\fIfpathconf\fR()
functions return \(mi1 without changing
.IR errno .
This can be distinguished from the case of giving an unrecognized
.IR name
argument because
.IR errno
is set to
.BR [EINVAL] 
in this case.
.P
Since \(mi1 is a valid return value for the
\fIpathconf\fR()
and
\fIfpathconf\fR()
functions, applications should set
.IR errno
to zero before calling them and check
.IR errno
only if the return value is \(mi1.
.P
For the case of
{SYMLINK_MAX},
since both
\fIpathconf\fR()
and
\fIopen\fR()
follow symbolic links, there is no way that
.IR path
or
.IR fildes
could refer to a symbolic link.
.P
It was the intention of IEEE\ Std 1003.1d\(hy1999 that the following variables:
.sp
.RS
{POSIX_ALLOC_SIZE_MIN}
{POSIX_REC_INCR_XFER_SIZE}
{POSIX_REC_MAX_XFER_SIZE}
{POSIX_REC_MIN_XFER_SIZE}
{POSIX_REC_XFER_ALIGN}
.RE
.P
only applied to regular files, but Note 10 also permits implementation
of the advisory semantics on other file types unique to an
implementation (for example, a character special device).
.P
The
.BR [EOVERFLOW] 
error for _PC_TIMESTAMP_RESOLUTION cannot occur on POSIX-compliant
file systems because POSIX requires a timestamp resolution no
larger than one second. Even on 32-bit systems, this can be
represented without overflow.
.SH "FUTURE DIRECTIONS"
None.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.IR "\fIchown\fR\^(\|)",
.IR "\fIconfstr\fR\^(\|)",
.IR "\fIsysconf\fR\^(\|)"
.P
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1\(hy2008,
.IR "\fB<limits.h>\fP",
.IR "\fB<unistd.h>\fP"
.P
The Shell and Utilities volume of POSIX.1\(hy2008,
.IR "\fIgetconf\fR\^"
.SH COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology
-- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.
(This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the
event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and
The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard
is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at
http://www.unix.org/online.html .

Any typographical or formatting errors that appear
in this page are most likely
to have been introduced during the conversion of the source files to
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https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .