3. errno

Synopsis

Error code set by system functions.

Usage

Integer_Type errno

Description

A system function can fail for a variety of reasons. For example, a file operation may fail because lack of disk space, or the process does not have permission to perform the operation. Such functions will return -1 and set the variable errno to an error code describing the reason for failure.

Particular values of errno may be specified by the following symbolic constants (read-only variables) and the corresponding errno_string value:

     EPERM            "Not owner"
     ENOENT           "No such file or directory"
     ESRCH            "No such process"
     ENXIO            "No such device or address"
     ENOEXEC          "Exec format error"
     EBADF            "Bad file number"
     ECHILD           "No children"
     ENOMEM           "Not enough core"
     EACCES           "Permission denied"
     EFAULT           "Bad address"
     ENOTBLK          "Block device required"
     EBUSY            "Mount device busy"
     EEXIST           "File exists"
     EXDEV            "Cross-device link"
     ENODEV           "No such device"
     ENOTDIR          "Not a directory"
     EISDIR           "Is a directory"
     EINVAL           "Invalid argument"
     ENFILE           "File table overflow"
     EMFILE           "Too many open files"
     ENOTTY           "Not a typewriter"
     ETXTBSY          "Text file busy"
     EFBIG            "File too large"
     ENOSPC           "No space left on device"
     ESPIPE           "Illegal seek"
     EROFS            "Read-only file system"
     EMLINK           "Too many links"
     EPIPE            "Broken pipe"
     ELOOP            "Too many levels of symbolic links"
     ENAMETOOLONG     "File name too long"

Example

The mkdir function will attempt to create a directory. If that directory already exists, the function will fail and set errno to EEXIST.

    define create_dir (dir)
    {
       if (0 == mkdir (dir)) return;
       if (errno != EEXIST)
         error ("mkdir %s failied: %s", dir, errno_string);
    }

See Also

errno_string, error, mkdir