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Annotation of 43BSDReno/lib/libc/gen/perror.3, revision 1.1.1.1

1.1       root        1: .\" Copyright (c) 1980 Regents of the University of California.
                      2: .\" All rights reserved.  The Berkeley software License Agreement
                      3: .\" specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
                      4: .\"
                      5: .\"    @(#)perror.3    6.4 (Berkeley) 6/24/90
                      6: .\"
                      7: .TH PERROR 3  "June 24, 1990"
                      8: .UC 4
                      9: .SH NAME
                     10: perror, strerror, sys_errlist, sys_nerr \- system error messages
                     11: .SH SYNOPSIS
                     12: .nf
                     13: .B perror(string)
                     14: .B char *string;
                     15: .PP
                     16: .B char *
                     17: .B strerror(errnum)
                     18: .B int errnum;
                     19: .PP
                     20: .B extern int errno, sys_nerr;
                     21: .B extern char *sys_errlist[];
                     22: .fi
                     23: .SH DESCRIPTION
                     24: .I Perror
                     25: produces a short error message on the standard error file
                     26: describing the last error encountered during a call
                     27: to the system from a C program.  If
                     28: .I string
                     29: is non-NULL, it is printed, followed by a colon, followed by a space,
                     30: followed by the message and a new-line.  Otherwise, just the
                     31: message and the new-line are printed.  Most usefully, the argument
                     32: string is the name of the program which incurred the error.
                     33: The error number is taken from the external variable
                     34: .I errno
                     35: (see
                     36: .IR intro (2)),
                     37: which is set when errors occur but not cleared when
                     38: non-erroneous calls are made.
                     39: .PP
                     40: To simplify variant formatting of messages, the
                     41: .I strerror
                     42: function returns a pointer to the error message string mapped
                     43: to the error number
                     44: .IR errnum .
                     45: .PP
                     46: The message strings can be accessed directly using the external
                     47: character array
                     48: .IR sys_errlist .
                     49: .I Sys_nerr
                     50: is the total number of messages in the array.  The use of these
                     51: variables is deprecated;
                     52: .I strerror
                     53: should be used instead.
                     54: .SH "SEE ALSO"
                     55: intro(2)

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