areadlink(3)

NAME

areadlink \- read value of a symolic link

#include <pathfns.h>

char *areadlink(const char *path);

This function reads the value of a symbolic link into a buffer allocated with malloc(3), and adds a null terminator.

The behaviour is undefined if path is a null pointer.

If the return value is not a null pointer then the operation succeeded and the return value is a pointer to the newly created string.

If the return value is a null pointer then the operation failed and errno is set appropriately:

ENOTDIR	A component of path is not a directory.
ENAMETOOLONG	path, or a component of path, is too long.
ENOENT	path does not exist.
EACCES	Permission denied accessing path.
ELOOP	path contains too many symbolic links.
EINVAL	path is not a symbolic link.
EIO	An I/O error occurred while reading from the file system.
ENOMEM	Insufficient memory (provided the local malloc sets errno).

readlink(2) performs a similar operation to this function, but it has an incredibly inconvenient interface.