debian man page for dup2

DUP(2)							      BSD System Calls Manual							    DUP(2)

NAME
     dup, dup2 -- duplicate an existing file descriptor

LIBRARY
     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
     #include <unistd.h>

     int
     dup(int oldd);

     int
     dup2(int oldd, int newd);

DESCRIPTION
     The dup() system call duplicates an existing object descriptor and returns its value to the calling process (newd = dup(oldd)).  The argument
     oldd is a small non-negative integer index in the per-process descriptor table.  The value must be less than the size of the table, which is
     returned by getdtablesize(2).  The new descriptor returned by the call is the lowest numbered descriptor currently not in use by the process.

     The object referenced by the descriptor does not distinguish between oldd and newd in any way.  Thus if newd and oldd are duplicate refer-
     ences to an open file, read(2), write(2) and lseek(2) calls all move a single pointer into the file, and append mode, non-blocking I/O and
     asynchronous I/O options are shared between the references.  If a separate pointer into the file is desired, a different object reference to
     the file must be obtained by issuing an additional open(2) system call.  The close-on-exec flag on the new file descriptor is unset.

     In dup2(), the value of the new descriptor newd is specified.  If this descriptor is already in use and oldd != newd, the descriptor is first
     deallocated as if the close(2) system call had been used.	If oldd is not a valid descriptor, then newd is not closed.  If oldd == newd and
     oldd is a valid descriptor, then dup2() is successful, and does nothing.

RETURN VALUES
     The value -1 is returned if an error occurs in either call.  The external variable errno indicates the cause of the error.

ERRORS
     The dup() and dup2() system calls fail if:

     [EBADF]		The oldd or newd argument is not a valid active descriptor

     [EMFILE]		Too many descriptors are active.

SEE ALSO
     accept(2), close(2), fcntl(2), getdtablesize(2), open(2), pipe(2), socket(2), socketpair(2)

STANDARDS
     The dup() and dup2() system calls are expected to conform to ISO/IEC 9945-1:1990 (``POSIX.1'').

HISTORY
     The dup() and dup2() functions appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.

BSD
								   June 4, 1993 							       BSD