listxattr(2) [sunos man page]

LISTXATTR(2)                                                 Linux Programmer's Manual                                                LISTXATTR(2)

NAME

       listxattr, llistxattr, flistxattr - list extended attribute names

SYNOPSIS

       #include <sys/types.h>
       #include <attr/xattr.h>

       ssize_t listxattr(const char *path, char *list, size_t size);
       ssize_t llistxattr(const char *path, char *list, size_t size);
       ssize_t flistxattr(int fd, char *list, size_t size);

DESCRIPTION

       Extended  attributes  are  name:value  pairs associated with inodes (files, directories, symbolic links, etc.).  They are extensions to the
       normal attributes which are associated with all inodes in the system (i.e., the stat(2) data).  A complete overview of extended  attributes
       concepts can be found in attr(5).

       listxattr()  retrieves  the  list  of  extended  attribute names associated with the given path in the file system.  The list is the set of
       (null-terminated) names, one after the other.  Names of extended attributes to which the calling process does not have access may be  omit-
       ted from the list.  The length of the attribute name list is returned.

       llistxattr()  is identical to listxattr(), except in the case of a symbolic link, where the list of names of extended attributes associated
       with the link itself is retrieved, not the file that it refers to.

       flistxattr() is identical to listxattr(), only the open file referred to by fd (as returned by open(2)) is interrogated in place of path.

       A single extended attribute name is a simple null-terminated string.  The name includes a namespace prefix; there may be several,  disjoint
       namespaces associated with an individual inode.

       An  empty  buffer of size zero can be passed into these calls to return the current size of the list of extended attribute names, which can
       be used to estimate the size of a buffer which is sufficiently large to hold the list of names.

   Example
       The list of names is returned as an unordered array of null-terminated character strings (attribute  names  are  separated  by  null  bytes
       ('')), like this:

              user.name1system.name1user.name2

       Filesystems like ext2, ext3 and XFS which implement POSIX ACLs using extended attributes, might return a list like this:

              system.posix_acl_accesssystem.posix_acl_default

RETURN VALUE

       On success, a positive number is returned indicating the size of the extended attribute name list.  On failure, -1 is returned and errno is
       set appropriately.

       If the size of the list buffer is too small to hold the result, errno is set to ERANGE.

       If extended attributes are not supported by the file system, or are disabled, errno is set to ENOTSUP.

       The errors documented for the stat(2) system call are also applicable here.

VERSIONS

       These system calls have been available on Linux since kernel 2.4; glibc support is provided since version 2.3.

CONFORMING TO

       These system calls are Linux-specific.

SEE ALSO

       getfattr(1), setfattr(1), getxattr(2), open(2), removexattr(2), setxattr(2), stat(2), attr(5), symlink(7)

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/.

Linux                                                               2001-12-01                                                        LISTXATTR(2)