MKSTEMP(3)						     Linux Programmer's Manual							MKSTEMP(3)

NAME

       mkstemp, mkostemp - create a unique temporary file

SYNOPSIS

       #include <stdlib.h>

       int mkstemp(char *template);

       int mkostemp (char *template, int flags);

       int mkstemps(char *template, int suffixlen);

       int mkostemps(char *template, int suffixlen, int flags);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       mkstemp(): _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500
       mkostemp(): _GNU_SOURCE
       mkstemps(): _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE
       mkostemps(): _GNU_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION

       The mkstemp() function generates a unique temporary filename from template, creates and opens the file, and returns an open file descriptor
       for the file.

       The last six characters of template must be "XXXXXX" and these are replaced with a string that makes the filename unique.  Since it will be
       modified, template must not be a string constant, but should be declared as a character array.

       The  file is created with permissions 0600, that is, read plus write for owner only.  (In glibc versions 2.06 and earlier, the file is cre-
       ated with permissions 0666, that is, read and write for all users.)  The returned file descriptor provides both read and  write	access	to
       the file.  The file is opened with the open(2) O_EXCL flag, guaranteeing that the caller is the process that creates the file.

       The  mkostemp()	function  is  like  mkstemp(),	with  the  difference that flags as for open(2) may be specified in flags (e.g., O_APPEND,
       O_SYNC).

       The mkstemps() function is like mkstemp(), except that the string in template contains a suffix of suffixlen characters.  Thus, template is
       of the form prefixXXXXXXsuffix, and the string XXXXXX is modified as for mkstemp().

       The mkostemps() function is to mkstemps() as mkostemp() is to mkstemp().

RETURN VALUE

       On success, these functions return the file descriptor of the temporary file.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS

       EEXIST Could not create a unique temporary filename.  Now the contents of template are undefined.

       EINVAL For mkstemp() and mkostemp(): The last six characters of template were not XXXXXX; now template is unchanged.

	      For  mkstemps() and mkostemps() template is less than (6 + suffixlen) characters long, or the last 6 characters before the suffix in
	      template were not XXXXXX.

       These functions may also fail with any of the errors described for open(2).

VERSIONS

       mkostemp() is available since glibc 2.7.  mkstemps() and mkostemps() are available since glibc 2.11.

CONFORMING TO

       mkstemp(): 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.

       mkstemps(): unstandardized, but appears on several other systems.

       mkostemp() and mkostemps(): are glibc extensions.

NOTES

       The old behavior of creating a file with mode 0666 may be a security risk, especially since other Unix flavors use 0600, and somebody might
       overlook this detail when porting programs.

       More  generally,  the POSIX specification of mkstemp() does not say anything about file modes, so the application should make sure its file
       mode creation mask (see umask(2)) is set appropriately before calling mkstemp() (and mkostemp()).

       The prototype for mktemp() is in <unistd.h> for libc4, libc5, glibc1; glibc2 follows POSIX.1 and has the prototype in <stdlib.h>.

SEE ALSO

       mkdtemp(3), mktemp(3), tempnam(3), tmpfile(3), tmpnam(3)

COLOPHON

       This page is part of release 3.25 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs,  can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

GNU
								    2010-06-19								MKSTEMP(3)