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'\" t
.\" Copyright (c) 1994 Michael Haardt (michael@moria.de), 1994-06-04
.\" Copyright (c) 1995 Michael Haardt
.\" (michael@cantor.informatik.rwth-aachen.de), 1995-03-16
.\" Copyright (c) 1996 Andries Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl), 1996-01-13
.\"
.\" SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
.\"
.\" 1996-01-13 aeb: merged in some text contributed by Melvin Smith
.\" (msmith@falcon.mercer.peachnet.edu) and various other changes.
.\" Modified 1996-05-16 by Martin Schulze (joey@infodrom.north.de)
.\"
.TH perror 3 2023-03-30 "Linux man-pages 6.04"
.SH NAME
perror \- print a system error message
.SH LIBRARY
Standard C library
.RI ( libc ", " \-lc )
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #include <stdio.h>
.PP
.BI "void perror(const char *" s );
.PP
.B #include <errno.h>
.PP
.BI "int " errno "; \fR/* Not really declared this way; see errno(3) */"
.PP
.BI "[[deprecated]] const char *const " sys_errlist [];
.BI "[[deprecated]] int " sys_nerr ;
.fi
.PP
.RS -4
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
.BR feature_test_macros (7)):
.RE
.PP
.IR sys_errlist ,
.IR sys_nerr :
.nf
From glibc 2.19 to glibc 2.31:
_DEFAULT_SOURCE
glibc 2.19 and earlier:
_BSD_SOURCE
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.BR perror ()
function produces a message on standard error describing the last
error encountered during a call to a system or library function.
.PP
First (if
.I s
is not NULL and
.I *s
is not a null byte (\[aq]\e0\[aq])), the argument string
.I s
is printed, followed by a colon and a blank.
Then an error message corresponding to the current value of
.I errno
and a new-line.
.PP
To be of most use, the argument string should include the name
of the function that incurred the error.
.PP
The global error list
.IR sys_errlist "[],"
which can be indexed by
.IR errno ,
can be used to obtain the error message without the newline.
The largest message number provided in the table is
.IR sys_nerr "\-1."
Be careful when directly accessing this list, because new error values
may not have been added to
.IR sys_errlist "[]."
The use of
.IR sys_errlist "[]"
is nowadays deprecated; use
.BR strerror (3)
instead.
.PP
When a system call fails, it usually returns \-1 and sets the
variable
.I errno
to a value describing what went wrong.
(These values can be found in
.IR <errno.h> .)
Many library functions do likewise.
The function
.BR perror ()
serves to translate this error code into human-readable form.
Note that
.I 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
.BR perror (),
the value of
.I errno
should be saved.
.SH ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
.BR attributes (7).
.ad l
.nh
.TS
allbox;
lbx lb lb
l l l.
Interface Attribute Value
T{
.BR perror ()
T} Thread safety MT-Safe race:stderr
.TE
.hy
.ad
.sp 1
.SH STANDARDS
.TP
.I errno
.TQ
.BR perror ()
C11, POSIX.1-2008.
.TP
.I sys_nerr
.TQ
.I sys_errlist
BSD.
.SH HISTORY
.TP
.I errno
.TQ
.BR perror ()
POSIX.1-2001, C89, 4.3BSD.
.TP
.I sys_nerr
.TQ
.I sys_errlist
Removed in glibc 2.32.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR err (3),
.BR errno (3),
.BR error (3),
.BR strerror (3)
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