NAME

     getmode, setmode — modify mode bits

LIBRARY

     Utility functions from BSD systems (libbsd, -lbsd)

SYNOPSIS

     #include <unistd.h>
     (See libbsd(7) for include usage.)

     void *
     setmode(const char *mode_str);

     mode_t
     getmode(const void *set, mode_t mode);

DESCRIPTION

     The setmode() function accepts a string representation of a file mode change, compiles it to
     binary form, and returns an abstract representation that may be passed to getmode().  The
     string may be an numeric (octal) or symbolic string of the form accepted by chmod(1), and
     may represent either an exact mode to set or a change to make to the existing mode.

     The getmode() function adjusts the file permission bits given by mode according to the
     compiled change representation set, and returns the adjusted mode.  While only the
     permission bits are altered, other parts of the file mode, particularly the type, may be
     examined.

     Because some of the possible symbolic values are defined relative to the file creation mask,
     setmode() may call umask(2), temporarily changing the mask.  If this occurs, the file
     creation mask will be restored before setmode() returns.  If the calling program changes the
     value of its file creation mask after calling setmode(), setmode() must be called again to
     recompile the mode string if getmode() is to modify future file modes correctly.

     If the mode passed to setmode() is invalid, setmode() returns NULL.

     The value returned from setmode() is obtained from malloc() and should be returned to the
     system with free() when the program is done with it, generally after a call to getmode().

EXAMPLES

     The effects of the shell command ‘chmod a+x myscript.sh’ can be duplicated as follows:

           const char *file = "myscript.sh";
           struct stat st;
           mode_t newmode;

           stat(file, &st);
           newmode = getmode(setmode("a+x"), st.st_mode);
           chmod(file, newmode);

ERRORS

     The setmode() function may fail and set errno for any of the errors specified for the
     library routines malloc(3) or strtol(3).  In addition, setmode() will fail and set errno to:

     [EINVAL]           The mode argument does not represent a valid mode.

SEE ALSO

     chmod(1), stat(2), umask(2), malloc(3)

HISTORY

     The getmode() and setmode() functions first appeared in 4.4BSD.

BUGS

     The type of set should really be some opaque struct type used only by these functions rather
     than void *.