readlink() places the
contents of the symbolic link path in the buffer buf, which has size bufsiz. readlink() does not append a null byte to
buf. It will truncate
the contents (to a length of bufsiz characters), in case the
buffer is too small to hold all of the contents.
RETURN VALUE
The call returns the count of characters placed in the
buffer if it succeeds, or a −1 if an error occurs,
placing the error code in errno.
ERRORS
EACCES
Search permission is denied for a component of the
path prefix. (See also path_resolution(7).)
EFAULT
buf extends
outside the process's allocated address space.
EINVAL
bufsiz is
not positive.
EINVAL
The named file is not a symbolic link.
EIO
An I/O error occurred while reading from the file
system.
ELOOP
Too many symbolic links were encountered in
translating the pathname.
ENAMETOOLONG
A pathname, or a component of a pathname, was too
long.
ENOENT
The named file does not exist.
ENOMEM
Insufficient kernel memory was available.
ENOTDIR
A component of the path prefix is not a
directory.
CONFORMING TO
4.4BSD (the readlink()
function call appeared in 4.2BSD), POSIX.1-2001.
NOTES
In versions of glibc up to and including glibc 2.4, the
return type of readlink() was
declared as int. Nowadays, the
return type is declared as ssize_t,
as (newly) required in POSIX.1-2001.
This page is part of release 2.79 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting
bugs, can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Copyright (c) 1983, 1991 The Regents of the University of California.
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
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notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
must display the following acknowledgement:
This product includes software developed by the University of
California, Berkeley and its contributors.
4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
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HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
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SUCH DAMAGE.
@(#)readlink.2
6.8 (Berkeley) 3/10/91
Modified Sat Jul 24 00:10:21 1993 by Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
Modified Tue Jul 9 23:55:17 1996 by aeb
Modified Fri Jan 24 00:26:00 1997 by aeb
![[Note]](../stylesheet/note.png)