libexplain/read.c File Reference

#include <libexplain/ac/errno.h>
#include <libexplain/ac/unistd.h>
#include <libexplain/read.h>

Go to the source code of this file.

Functions
const char *	explain_read (int fildes, const void *data, size_t data_size)

---

Function Documentation

const char* explain_read	(	int	fildes,
		const void *	data,
		size_t	data_size
	)

The explain_read function is used to obtain an explanation of an error returned by the read(2) system call. The least the message will contain is the value of strerror(errno), but usually it will do much better, and indicate the underlying cause in more detail.

The errno global variable will be used to obtain the error value to be decoded.

This function is intended to be used in a fashion similar to the following example:

 ssize_t result = read(fildes, data, data_size);
 if (result < 0)
 {
     fprintf(stderr, "%s\n", explain_read(fildes, data, data_size));
     exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
 }

The above code example is available pre-packaged as the explain_read_or_die function.

Parameters:

fildes	The original fildes, exactly as passed to the read(2) system call.
data	The original data, exactly as passed to the read(2) system call.
data_size	The original data_size, exactly as passed to the read(2) system call.

Returns:

The message explaining the error. This message buffer is shared by all libexplain functions which do not supply a buffer in their argument list. This will be overwritten by the next call to any libexplain function which shares this buffer, including other threads.

Note:

This function is not thread safe, because it shares a return buffer across all threads, and many other functions in this library.

Definition at line 27 of file read.c.