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This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of
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NAME
fpathconf, pathconf — get configurable pathname variables
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
long fpathconf(int fildes, int name);
long pathconf(const char *path, int name);
DESCRIPTION
The fpathconf() and pathconf() functions shall determine the current value of a
configurable limit or option (variable) that is associated with a file or directory.
For pathconf(), the path argument points to the pathname of a file or directory.
For fpathconf(), the fildes argument is an open file descriptor.
The name argument represents the variable to be queried relative to that file or
directory. Implementations shall support all of the variables listed in the following
table and may support others. The variables in the following table come from <limits.h> or
<unistd.h> and the symbolic constants, defined in <unistd.h>, are the corresponding values
used for name.
┌────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┬──────────────┐
│ Variable │ Value of name │ Requirements │
├────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼──────────────┤
│{FILESIZEBITS} │ _PC_FILESIZEBITS │ 4,7 │
│{LINK_MAX} │ _PC_LINK_MAX │ 1 │
│{MAX_CANON} │ _PC_MAX_CANON │ 2 │
│{MAX_INPUT} │ _PC_MAX_INPUT │ 2 │
│{NAME_MAX} │ _PC_NAME_MAX │ 3,4 │
│{PATH_MAX} │ _PC_PATH_MAX │ 4,5 │
│{PIPE_BUF} │ _PC_PIPE_BUF │ 6 │
│{POSIX2_SYMLINKS} │ _PC_2_SYMLINKS │ 4 │
│{POSIX_ALLOC_SIZE_MIN} │ _PC_ALLOC_SIZE_MIN │ 10 │
│{POSIX_REC_INCR_XFER_SIZE} │ _PC_REC_INCR_XFER_SIZE │ 10 │
│{POSIX_REC_MAX_XFER_SIZE} │ _PC_REC_MAX_XFER_SIZE │ 10 │
│{POSIX_REC_MIN_XFER_SIZE} │ _PC_REC_MIN_XFER_SIZE │ 10 │
│{POSIX_REC_XFER_ALIGN} │ _PC_REC_XFER_ALIGN │ 10 │
│{SYMLINK_MAX} │ _PC_SYMLINK_MAX │ 4,9 │
│_POSIX_CHOWN_RESTRICTED │ _PC_CHOWN_RESTRICTED │ 7 │
│_POSIX_NO_TRUNC │ _PC_NO_TRUNC │ 3,4 │
│_POSIX_VDISABLE │ _PC_VDISABLE │ 2 │
│_POSIX_ASYNC_IO │ _PC_ASYNC_IO │ 8 │
│_POSIX_PRIO_IO │ _PC_PRIO_IO │ 8 │
│_POSIX_SYNC_IO │ _PC_SYNC_IO │ 8 │
│_POSIX_TIMESTAMP_RESOLUTION │ _PC_TIMESTAMP_RESOLUTION │ 1 │
└────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────┴──────────────┘
Requirements
1. If path or fildes refers to a directory, the value returned shall apply to the
directory itself.
2. If path or fildes does not refer to a terminal file, it is unspecified whether an
implementation supports an association of the variable name with the specified file.
3. If path or fildes refers to a directory, the value returned shall apply to filenames
within the directory.
4. If path or fildes does not refer to a directory, it is unspecified whether an
implementation supports an association of the variable name with the specified file.
5. If path or fildes refers to a directory, the value returned shall be the maximum
length of a relative pathname that would not cross any mount points when the specified
directory is the working directory.
6. If path refers to a FIFO, or fildes refers to a pipe or FIFO, the value returned shall
apply to the referenced object. If path or fildes refers to a directory, the value
returned shall apply to any FIFO that exists or can be created within the directory.
If path or fildes refers to any other type of file, it is unspecified whether an
implementation supports an association of the variable name with the specified file.
7. If path or fildes refers to a directory, the value returned shall apply to any files,
other than directories, that exist or can be created within the directory.
8. If path or fildes refers to a directory, it is unspecified whether an implementation
supports an association of the variable name with the specified file.
9. If path or fildes refers to a directory, the value returned shall be the maximum
length of the string that a symbolic link in that directory can contain.
10. If path or fildes des does not refer to a regular file, it is unspecified whether an
implementation supports an association of the variable name with the specified file.
If an implementation supports such an association for other than a regular file, the
value returned is unspecified.
RETURN VALUE
If name is an invalid value, both pathconf() and fpathconf() shall return −1 and set errno
to indicate the error.
If the variable corresponding to name is described in <limits.h> as a maximum or minimum
value and the variable has no limit for the path or file descriptor, both pathconf() and
fpathconf() shall return −1 without changing errno. Note that indefinite limits do not
imply infinite limits; see <limits.h>.
If the implementation needs to use path to determine the value of name and the
implementation does not support the association of name with the file specified by path,
or if the process did not have appropriate privileges to query the file specified by path,
or path does not exist, pathconf() shall return −1 and set errno to indicate the error.
If the implementation needs to use fildes to determine the value of name and the
implementation does not support the association of name with the file specified by fildes,
or if fildes is an invalid file descriptor, fpathconf() shall return −1 and set errno to
indicate the error.
Otherwise, pathconf() or fpathconf() shall return the current variable value for the file
or directory without changing errno. The value returned shall not be more restrictive
than the corresponding value available to the application when it was compiled with the
implementation's <limits.h> or <unistd.h>.
If the variable corresponding to name is dependent on an unsupported option, the results
are unspecified.
ERRORS
The pathconf() function shall fail if:
EINVAL The value of name is not valid.
ELOOP A loop exists in symbolic links encountered during resolution of the path argument.
EOVERFLOW
The value of name is _PC_TIMESTAMP_RESOLUTION and the resolution is larger than
{LONG_MAX}.
The pathconf() function may fail if:
EACCES Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.
EINVAL The implementation does not support an association of the variable name with the
specified file.
ELOOP More than {SYMLOOP_MAX} symbolic links were encountered during resolution of the
path argument.
ENAMETOOLONG
The length of a component of a pathname is longer than {NAME_MAX}.
ENAMETOOLONG
The length of a pathname exceeds {PATH_MAX}, or pathname resolution of a symbolic
link produced an intermediate result with a length that exceeds {PATH_MAX}.
ENOENT A component of path does not name an existing file or path is an empty string.
ENOTDIR
A component of the path prefix names an existing file that is neither a directory
nor a symbolic link to a directory, or the path argument contains at least one
non-<slash> character and ends with one or more trailing <slash> characters and the
last pathname component names an existing file that is neither a directory nor a
symbolic link to a directory.
The fpathconf() function shall fail if:
EINVAL The value of name is not valid.
EOVERFLOW
The value of name is _PC_TIMESTAMP_RESOLUTION and the resolution is larger than
{LONG_MAX}.
The fpathconf() function may fail if:
EBADF The fildes argument is not a valid file descriptor.
EINVAL The implementation does not support an association of the variable name with the
specified file.
The following sections are informative.
EXAMPLES
None.
APPLICATION USAGE
Application developers should check whether an option, such as _POSIX_ADVISORY_INFO, is
supported prior to obtaining and using values for related variables such as
{POSIX_ALLOC_SIZE_MIN}.
RATIONALE
The pathconf() function was proposed immediately after the sysconf() function when it was
realized that some configurable values may differ across file system, directory, or device
boundaries.
For example, {NAME_MAX} frequently changes between System V and BSD-based file systems;
System V uses a maximum of 14, BSD 255. On an implementation that provides both types of
file systems, an application would be forced to limit all pathname components to 14 bytes,
as this would be the value specified in <limits.h> on such a system.
Therefore, various useful values can be queried on any pathname or file descriptor,
assuming that appropriate privileges are in place.
The value returned for the variable {PATH_MAX} indicates the longest relative pathname
that could be given if the specified directory is the current working directory of the
process. A process may not always be able to generate a name that long and use it if a
subdirectory in the pathname crosses into a more restrictive file system. Note that
implementations are allowed to accept pathnames longer than {PATH_MAX} bytes long, but are
not allowed to return pathnames longer than this unless the user specifies a larger buffer
using a function that provides a buffer size argument.
The value returned for the variable _POSIX_CHOWN_RESTRICTED also applies to directories
that do not have file systems mounted on them. The value may change when crossing a mount
point, so applications that need to know should check for each directory. (An even easier
check is to try the chown() function and look for an error in case it happens.)
Unlike the values returned by sysconf(), the pathname-oriented variables are potentially
more volatile and are not guaranteed to remain constant throughout the lifetime of the
process. For example, in between two calls to pathconf(), the file system in question may
have been unmounted and remounted with different characteristics.
Also note that most of the errors are optional. If one of the variables always has the
same value on an implementation, the implementation need not look at path or fildes to
return that value and is, therefore, not required to detect any of the errors except the
meaning of [EINVAL] that indicates that the value of name is not valid for that variable.
If the value of any of the limits is unspecified (logically infinite), they will not be
defined in <limits.h> and the pathconf() and fpathconf() functions return −1 without
changing errno. This can be distinguished from the case of giving an unrecognized name
argument because errno is set to [EINVAL] in this case.
Since −1 is a valid return value for the pathconf() and fpathconf() functions,
applications should set errno to zero before calling them and check errno only if the
return value is −1.
For the case of {SYMLINK_MAX}, since both pathconf() and open() follow symbolic links,
there is no way that path or fildes could refer to a symbolic link.
It was the intention of IEEE Std 1003.1d‐1999 that the following variables:
{POSIX_ALLOC_SIZE_MIN} {POSIX_REC_INCR_XFER_SIZE} {POSIX_REC_MAX_XFER_SIZE}
{POSIX_REC_MIN_XFER_SIZE} {POSIX_REC_XFER_ALIGN}
only applied to regular files, but Note 10 also permits implementation of the advisory
semantics on other file types unique to an implementation (for example, a character
special device).
The [EOVERFLOW] error for _PC_TIMESTAMP_RESOLUTION cannot occur on POSIX-compliant file
systems because POSIX requires a timestamp resolution no larger than one second. Even on
32-bit systems, this can be represented without overflow.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
chown(), confstr(), sysconf()
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, <limits.h>, <unistd.h>
The Shell and Utilities volume of POSIX.1‐2008, getconf
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std
1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System
Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. (This is
POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the event of any
discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the
original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard
can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have
been introduced during the conversion of the source files to man page format. To report
such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .