WORDEXP(3)						   BSD Library Functions Manual 						WORDEXP(3)

NAME

     wordexp -- perform shell-style word expansions

SYNOPSIS

     #include <wordexp.h>

     int
     wordexp(const char *restrict words, wordexp_t *restrict pwordexp, int flags);

     void
     wordfree(wordexp_t *pwordexp);

DESCRIPTION

     The wordexp() function performs shell-style word expansion on words.  It places the list of words into the we_wordv member of pwordexp and
     the number of words into we_wordc.

     The flags argument (see BUGS) is the bitwise inclusive OR of any of the following constants:

     WRDE_APPEND   Append the words to those generated by a previous call to wordexp().

     WRDE_DOOFS    As many NULL pointers as are specified by the we_offs member of pwordexp are added to the front of we_wordv.

     WRDE_NOCMD    Disallow command substitution in words.  See the note in BUGS before using this.

     WRDE_REUSE    The pwordexp argument was passed to a previous successful call to wordexp() but has not been passed to wordfree().  The imple-
		   mentation may reuse the space allocated to it.

     WRDE_SHOWERR  Do not redirect shell error messages to /dev/null.

     WRDE_UNDEF    Report error on an attempt to expand an undefined shell variable.

     The wordexp_t structure is defined in <wordexp.h> as:

	   typedef struct {
		   size_t  we_wordc;	   /* count of words matched */
		   char    **we_wordv;	   /* pointer to list of words */
		   size_t  we_offs;	   /* slots to reserve in we_wordv */
	   } wordexp_t;

     The wordfree() function frees the memory allocated by wordexp().

RETURN VALUES

     The wordexp() function returns zero if successful, otherwise it returns one of the following error codes:

     WRDE_BADCHAR  The words argument contains one of the following unquoted characters: <newline>, '|', '&', ';', '<', '>', '(', ')', '{', '}'.

     WRDE_BADVAL   An attempt was made to expand an undefined shell variable and WRDE_UNDEF is set in flags.

     WRDE_CMDSUB   An attempt was made to use command substitution and WRDE_NOCMD is set in flags.

     WRDE_NOSPACE  Not enough memory to store the result.

     WRDE_SYNTAX   Shell syntax error in words.

     The wordfree() function returns no value.

EXAMPLES

     Invoke the editor on all .c files in the current directory and /etc/motd (error checking omitted):

	   wordexp_t pwordexp;

	   wordexp("${EDITOR:-vi} *.c /etc/motd", &pwordexp, 0);
	   execvp(pwordexp->we_wordv[0], pwordexp->we_wordv);

SEE ALSO

     sh(1), fnmatch(3), glob(3), popen(3), system(3)

BUGS

     This version of wordexp() ignores the value of the flags argument.

COPYRIGHT

     Copyright 1995-2002 University Corporation for Atmospheric Research/Unidata

     Portions of this software were developed by the Unidata Program at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

BSD
								 December 27, 2002							       BSD