NAME

       realpath - return the canonicalized absolute pathname

SYNOPSIS

       #include <limits.h>
       #include <stdlib.h>

       char *realpath(const char *path, char *resolved_path);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       realpath():
           _BSD_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500 || _XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED

DESCRIPTION

       realpath()  expands  all symbolic links and resolves references to /./, /../ and extra '/'
       characters in the null-terminated string named by path to produce a canonicalized absolute
       pathname.   The  resulting pathname is stored as a null-terminated string, up to a maximum
       of PATH_MAX bytes, in the buffer pointed to by resolved_path.   The  resulting  path  will
       have no symbolic link, /./ or /../ components.

       If resolved_path is specified as NULL, then realpath() uses malloc(3) to allocate a buffer
       of up to PATH_MAX bytes to hold the resolved pathname,  and  returns  a  pointer  to  this
       buffer.  The caller should deallocate this buffer using free(3).

RETURN VALUE

       If there is no error, realpath() returns a pointer to the resolved_path.

       Otherwise,  it  returns  a  NULL  pointer,  the  contents  of  the array resolved_path are
       undefined, and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

       EACCES Read or search permission was denied for a component of the path prefix.

       EINVAL path is NULL.  (In glibc versions before  2.3,  this  error  is  also  returned  if
              resolved_path is NULL.)

       EIO    An I/O error occurred while reading from the filesystem.

       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.

       ENAMETOOLONG
              A  component  of  a  pathname  exceeded  NAME_MAX characters, or an entire pathname
              exceeded PATH_MAX characters.

       ENOENT The named file does not exist.

       ENOTDIR
              A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

VERSIONS

       On Linux, this function appeared in libc 4.5.21.

CONFORMING TO

       4.4BSD, POSIX.1-2001.

       POSIX.1-2001 says that the behavior if resolved_path is  NULL  is  implementation-defined.
       POSIX.1-2008 specifies the behavior described in this page.

NOTES

       In  4.4BSD  and  Solaris,  the  limit  on  the  pathname  length  is  MAXPATHLEN (found in
       <sys/param.h>).  SUSv2 prescribes  PATH_MAX  and  NAME_MAX,  as  found  in  <limits.h>  or
       provided by the pathconf(3) function.  A typical source fragment would be

           #ifdef PATH_MAX
             path_max = PATH_MAX;
           #else
             path_max = pathconf(path, _PC_PATH_MAX);
             if (path_max <= 0)
               path_max = 4096;
           #endif

       (But see the BUGS section.)

       The  prototype  of realpath() is given in <unistd.h> in libc4 and libc5, but in <stdlib.h>
       everywhere else.

   GNU extensions
       If the call fails with either EACCES or ENOENT and resolved_path is  not  NULL,  then  the
       prefix of path that is not readable or does not exist is returned in resolved_path.

BUGS

       The  POSIX.1-2001  standard  version  of  this  function  is broken by design, since it is
       impossible to determine a suitable size for the output buffer,  resolved_path.   According
       to  POSIX.1-2001  a  buffer  of size PATH_MAX suffices, but PATH_MAX need not be a defined
       constant, and may have to be obtained using pathconf(3).  And asking pathconf(3) does  not
       really help, since, on the one hand POSIX warns that the result of pathconf(3) may be huge
       and unsuitable for mallocing memory, and on the other hand pathconf(3) may  return  -1  to
       signify that PATH_MAX is not bounded.  The resolved_path == NULL feature, not standardized
       in POSIX.1-2001, but standardized in  POSIX.1-2008,  allows  this  design  problem  to  be
       avoided.

       The  libc4  and  libc5  implementation contained a buffer overflow (fixed in libc-5.4.13).
       Thus, set-user-ID programs like mount(8) needed a private version.

SEE ALSO

       readlink(2), canonicalize_file_name(3), getcwd(3), pathconf(3), sysconf(3)

COLOPHON

       This page is part of release 3.54 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/.

                                            2013-03-15                                REALPATH(3)