PATHCONF(2) System Calls Manual PATHCONF(2)

pathconf, fpathconf — get configurable pathname variables

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

#include <unistd.h>

long
pathconf(const char *path, int name);

long
fpathconf(int fd, int name);

The () and () functions provide a method for applications to determine the current value of a configurable system limit or option variable associated with a pathname or file descriptor.

For pathconf, the path argument is the name of a file or directory. For fpathconf, the fd argument is an open file descriptor. The name argument specifies the system variable to be queried. Symbolic constants for each name value are found in the <unistd.h> header.

The available values are as follows:

The maximum file link count.
The maximum number of bytes in terminal canonical input line.
The minimum maximum number of bytes for which space is available in a terminal input queue.
The maximum number of bytes in a filename, not including a terminating null character.
The maximum number of bytes in a pathname, including the terminating null character.
The maximum number of bytes which will be written atomically to a pipe.
Return 1 if appropriate privileges are required for the chown(2) system call, otherwise 0.
Return 0 if filenames longer than {NAME_MAX} are silently truncated, or non-zero if an error is generated when {NAME_MAX} is exceeded.
Returns the terminal character disabling value.
Returns 1 if synchronized I/O is supported, otherwise 0.
If the maximum size file that could ever exist on the mounted file system is maxsize, then the returned value is 2 plus the floor of the base 2 logarithm of maxsize.
The maximum number of bytes in a symbolic link.
When referring to a directory the system supports the creation of symbolic links within that directory; for nondirectory files, the meaning of {_PC_2_SYMLINKS} is undefined.

If the call to pathconf or fpathconf is not successful, -1 is returned and errno is set appropriately. Otherwise, if the variable is associated with functionality that does not have a limit in the system, -1 is returned and errno is not modified. Otherwise, the current variable value is returned.

If any of the following conditions occur, the pathconf and fpathconf functions shall return -1 and set errno to the corresponding value.

[]
The value of the name argument is invalid, or the implementation does not support an association of the variable name with the associated file.

pathconf() will fail if:

[]
Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.
[]
An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
[]
Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
[]
A component of a pathname exceeded {NAME_MAX} characters, or an entire path name exceeded {PATH_MAX} characters.
[]
The named file does not exist.
[]
A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

fpathconf() will fail if:

[]
fd is not a valid open file descriptor.
[]
An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.

sysctl(3)

The pathconf() and fpathconf() functions conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-1990 (“POSIX.1”).

The pathconf and fpathconf functions first appeared in 4.4BSD.

July 26, 2010 NetBSD 11.0