PROPERTIES(3) BSD Library Functions Manual PROPERTIES(3)
NAME
properties_read, property_find, properties_free -- functions to allow creating simple property lists from ASCII file data
LIBRARY
System Utilities Library (libutil, -lutil)
SYNOPSIS
#include <libutil.h>
properties
properties_read(int fd);
char *
property_find(properties list, const char *name);
void
properties_free(properties list);
DESCRIPTION
typedef struct _properties {
struct _properties *next;
char *name;
char *value;
} *properties;
The function properties_read() reads name = value pairs from the file descriptor passed in fd and returns the head of a new property list,
assuming that the file's contents have been parsed properly, or NULL in case of error.
The property_find() function returns the associated value string for the property named name if found, otherwise NULL. The value returned
may be up to PROPERTY_MAX_VALUE bytes in length.
The properties_free() function is used to free the structure returned by properties_read() when it is no longer needed.
FILE FORMAT
Each property in the file is assumed to have the format of name = value where name is an alphanumeric string (and any punctuation not includ-
ing the `=' character) and value is an arbitrary string of text terminated by a newline character. If newlines are desired, the entire value
should be enclosed in { } (curly-bracket) characters. Any line beginning with a # or ; character is assumed to be a comment and will be
ignored.
AUTHORS
Jordan Hubbard
BUGS
Simplistic.
BSD
October 7, 1998 BSD
