freebsd man page for setmode

SETMODE(3)						   BSD Library Functions Manual 						SETMODE(3)

NAME
     getmode, setmode -- modify mode bits

LIBRARY
     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
     #include <unistd.h>

     mode_t
     getmode(const void *set, mode_t mode);

     void *
     setmode(const char *mode_str);

DESCRIPTION
     The getmode() function returns a copy of the file permission bits mode as altered by the values pointed to by set.  While only the mode bits
     are altered, other parts of the file mode may be examined.

     The setmode() function takes an absolute (octal) or symbolic value, as described in chmod(1), as an argument and returns a pointer to mode
     values to be supplied to getmode().  Because some of the symbolic values are relative to the file creation mask, setmode() may call umask(2).
     If this occurs, the file creation mask will be restored before setmode() returns.	If the calling program changes the value of its file cre-
     ation mask after calling setmode(), setmode() must be called again if getmode() is to modify future file modes correctly.

     If the mode passed to setmode() is invalid or if memory cannot be allocated for the return value, setmode() returns NULL.

     The value returned from setmode() is obtained from malloc() and should be returned to the system with free() when the program is done with
     it, generally after a call to getmode().

ERRORS
     The setmode() function may fail and set errno for any of the errors specified for the library routine malloc(3).

SEE ALSO
     chmod(1), stat(2), umask(2), malloc(3)

HISTORY
     The getmode() and setmode() functions first appeared in 4.4BSD.

BSD
								  April 28, 1995							       BSD