strerror

System error messages

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Contents

Interface
Description
History
Bugs
Page Comments

Interface

#include <stdio.h>void  perror (const char *string)
externint  sys_nerr ()

#include <string.h>char*  strerror (int errnum)
int  strerror_r (int errnum, char *strerrbuf, size_t buflen)

Description

The strerror, strerror_r and perror functions look up the error message string corresponding to an error number.

The strerror function accepts an error number argument errnum and returns a pointer to the corresponding message string.

The strerror_r function renders the same result into strerrbuf for a maximum of buflen characters and returns 0 upon success.

The perror function finds the error message corresponding to the current value of the global variable errno and writes it, followed by a newline, to the standard error file descriptor. If the argument \c string is non- NULL and does not point to the null character, this string is prepended to the message string and separated from it by a colon and space; otherwise, only the error message string is printed.

If the error number is not recognized, these functions return an error message string containing "Unknown error:" followed by the error number in decimal. The strerror and strerror_r functions return EINVAL as a warning. Error numbers recognized by this implementation fall in the range 0 < errnum < sys_nerr.

If insufficient storage is provided in strerrbuf (as specified in buflen) to contain the error string, strerror_r returns ERANGE and strerrbuf will contain an error message that has been truncated and NUL terminated to fit the length specified by buflen.

The message strings can be accessed directly using the external array sys_errlist. The external value sys_nerr contains a count of the messages in sys_errlist. The use of these variables is deprecated; strerror or strerror_r should be used instead.

Example 1

#include <stdio.h>
 
int main()
{
  char error_message[100] = {0};
  perror(error_message);
  return 0;
}

Output:

No error

History

The strerror and perror functions first appeared in 4.4BSD. The strerror_r function was implemented in FreeBSD 4.4 by Wes Peters <wes@FreeBSD.org>.

Bugs

For unknown error numbers, the strerror function will return its result in a static buffer which may be overwritten by subsequent calls.

The return type for strerror is missing a type-qualifier; it should actually be const char *.

Programs that use the deprecated sys_errlist variable often fail to compile because they declare it inconsistently.

void	`perror` (const char *string)
externint	`sys_nerr` ()

char*	`strerror` (int errnum)
int	`strerror_r` (int errnum, char *strerrbuf, size_t buflen)