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perror(3) Library Functions Manual perror(3)
perror - print a system error message
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
#include <stdio.h> void perror(const char *s); #include <errno.h> int errno; /* Not really declared this way; see errno(3) */ [[deprecated]] const char *const sys_errlist[]; [[deprecated]] int sys_nerr; Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)): sys_errlist, sys_nerr: From glibc 2.19 to glibc 2.31: _DEFAULT_SOURCE glibc 2.19 and earlier: _BSD_SOURCE
The perror() function produces a message on standard error describing the last error encountered during a call to a system or library function. First (if s is not NULL and *s is not a null byte ('\0')), the argument string s is printed, followed by a colon and a blank. Then an error message corresponding to the current value of errno and a new-line. To be of most use, the argument string should include the name of the function that incurred the error. The global error list sys_errlist[], which can be indexed by errno, can be used to obtain the error message without the newline. The largest message number provided in the table is sys_nerr-1. Be careful when directly accessing this list, because new error values may not have been added to sys_errlist[]. The use of sys_errlist[] is nowadays deprecated; use strerror(3) instead. When a system call fails, it usually returns -1 and sets the variable errno to a value describing what went wrong. (These values can be found in <errno.h>.) Many library functions do likewise. The function perror() serves to translate this error code into human-readable form. Note that errno is undefined after a successful system call or library function call: this call may well change this variable, even though it succeeds, for example because it internally used some other library function that failed. Thus, if a failing call is not immediately followed by a call to perror(), the value of errno should be saved.
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7). ┌─────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────────────────┐ │ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │ ├─────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────────────┤ │ perror() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe race:stderr │ └─────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────────────────┘
errno perror() C11, POSIX.1-2008. sys_nerr sys_errlist BSD.
errno perror() POSIX.1-2001, C89, 4.3BSD. sys_nerr sys_errlist Removed in glibc 2.32.
err(3), errno(3), error(3), strerror(3)
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Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-06-15 perror(3)
Pages that refer to this page: err(3), errno(3), error(3), fmtmsg(3), pmerrstr(3), psignal(3), sd_journal_print(3), stdio(3), strerror(3)