READLINK(2)						      BSD System Calls Manual						       READLINK(2)

NAME

     readlink -- read value of a symbolic link

LIBRARY

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

     #include <unistd.h>

     ssize_t
     readlink(const char * restrict path, char * restrict buf, size_t bufsiz);

DESCRIPTION

     readlink() places the contents of the symbolic link path in the buffer buf, which has size bufsiz.  readlink() does not append a NUL charac-
     ter to buf.

RETURN VALUES

     The call returns the count of characters placed in the buffer if it succeeds, or a -1 if an error occurs, placing the error code in the
     global variable errno.

EXAMPLES

     A typical use is illustrated in the following piece of code which reads the contents of a symbolic link named /symbolic/link and stores them
     as null-terminated string:

	   #include <limits.h>
	   #include <unistd.h>

	   char buf[PATH_MAX];
	   ssize_t len;

	   if ((len = readlink("/symbolic/link", buf, sizeof(buf)-1)) == -1)
		   error handling;
	   buf[len] = '';

ERRORS

     readlink() will fail if:

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

     [ENAMETOOLONG]	A component of a pathname exceeded {NAME_MAX} characters, or an entire path name exceeded {PATH_MAX} characters.

     [ENOENT]		The named file does not exist.

     [EACCES]		Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.

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

     [EINVAL]		The named file is not a symbolic link.

     [EIO]		An I/O error occurred while reading from the file system.

     [EFAULT]		buf extends outside the process's allocated address space.

SEE ALSO

     lstat(2), stat(2), symlink(2), symlink(7)

STANDARDS

     The readlink() function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (``POSIX.1'').

HISTORY

     The readlink() function appeared in 4.2BSD.  The type returned was changed from int to ssize_t in NetBSD 2.1.

BSD
								   May 11, 2004 							       BSD