FPARSELN(3)						   BSD Library Functions Manual 					       FPARSELN(3)

NAME

     fparseln -- return the next logical line from a stream

LIBRARY

     System Utilities Library (libutil, -lutil)

SYNOPSIS

     #include <stdio.h>
     #include <libutil.h>

     char *
     fparseln(FILE *stream, size_t *len, size_t *lineno, const char delim[3], int flags);

DESCRIPTION

     The fparseln() function returns a pointer to the next logical line from the stream referenced by stream.  This string is NUL terminated and
     it is dynamically allocated on each invocation.  It is the responsibility of the caller to free the pointer.

     By default, if a character is escaped, both it and the preceding escape character will be present in the returned string.	Various flags
     alter this behaviour.

     The meaning of the arguments is as follows:

     stream  The stream to read from.

     len     If not NULL, the length of the string is stored in the memory location to which it points.

     lineno  If not NULL, the value of the memory location to which is pointed to, is incremented by the number of lines actually read from the
	     file.

     delim   Contains the escape, continuation, and comment characters.  If a character is NUL then processing for that character is disabled.	If
	     NULL, all characters default to values specified below.  The contents of delim is as follows:

	     delim[0]  The escape character, which defaults to , is used to remove any special meaning from the next character.

	     delim[1]  The continuation character, which defaults to , is used to indicate that the next line should be concatenated with the
		       current one if this character is the last character on the current line and is not escaped.

	     delim[2]  The comment character, which defaults to #, if not escaped indicates the beginning of a comment that extends until the end
		       of the current line.

     flags   If non-zero, alter the operation of fparseln().  The various flags, which may be or-ed together, are:

	     FPARSELN_UNESCCOMM  Remove escape preceding an escaped comment.

	     FPARSELN_UNESCCONT  Remove escape preceding an escaped continuation.

	     FPARSELN_UNESCESC	 Remove escape preceding an escaped escape.

	     FPARSELN_UNESCREST  Remove escape preceding any other character.

	     FPARSELN_UNESCALL	 All of the above.

RETURN VALUES

     Upon successful completion a pointer to the parsed line is returned; otherwise, NULL is returned.

     The fparseln() function uses internally fgetln(3), so all error conditions that apply to fgetln(3), apply to fparseln().  In addition
     fparseln() may set errno to ENOMEM and return NULL if it runs out of memory.

SEE ALSO

     fgetln(3)

HISTORY

     The fparseln() function first appeared in NetBSD 1.4 and FreeBSD 4.0.

BSD
								 December 1, 1997							       BSD