libexplain/waitpid.c File Reference

#include <libexplain/ac/errno.h>
#include <libexplain/waitpid.h>

Go to the source code of this file.

Functions
const char *	explain_waitpid (int pid, int *status, int options)

---

Function Documentation

const char* explain_waitpid	(	int	pid,
		int *	status,
		int	options
	)

The explain_waitpid function is used to obtain an explanation of an error returned by the waitpid(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:

 pid_t result = waitpid(pid, status, options);
 if (result < 0)
 {
     fprintf(stderr, "%s\n", explain_waitpid(pid, status, options));
     exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
 }

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

Parameters:

pid	The original pid, exactly as passed to the waitpid(2) system call.
status	The original status, exactly as passed to the waitpid(2) system call.
options	The original options, exactly as passed to the waitpid(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 25 of file waitpid.c.