perror - print a system error message
Contents
Attributes
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────────────────┐
│ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────────────┤
│ perror() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe race:stderr │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────────────────┘
Description
The perror() function produces a message on standard error describing the last error encountered during a
call to a system or library function.
First (if s is not NULL and *s is not a null byte ('\0')), the argument string s is printed, followed by
a colon and a blank. Then an error message corresponding to the current value of errno and a new-line.
To be of most use, the argument string should include the name of the function that incurred the error.
The global error list sys_errlist[], which can be indexed by errno, can be used to obtain the error
message without the newline. The largest message number provided in the table is sys_nerr-1. Be careful
when directly accessing this list, because new error values may not have been added to sys_errlist[].
The use of sys_errlist[] is nowadays deprecated; use strerror(3) instead.
When a system call fails, it usually returns -1 and sets the variable errno to a value describing what
went wrong. (These values can be found in <errno.h>.) Many library functions do likewise. The function
perror() serves to translate this error code into human-readable form. Note that errno is undefined
after a successful system call or library function call: this call may well change this variable, even
though it succeeds, for example because it internally used some other library function that failed.
Thus, if a failing call is not immediately followed by a call to perror(), the value of errno should be
saved.
History
errnoperror()
POSIX.1-2001, C89, 4.3BSD.
sys_nerrsys_errlist
Removed in glibc 2.32.
Library
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
Name
perror - print a system error message
See Also
err(3), errno(3), error(3), strerror(3) Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-06-15 perror(3)
Standards
errnoperror()
C11, POSIX.1-2008.
sys_nerrsys_errlist
BSD.
Synopsis
#include<stdio.h>voidperror(constchar*s);#include<errno.h>interrno; /* Not really declared this way; see errno(3) */ [[deprecated]]constchar*constsys_errlist[];[[deprecated]]intsys_nerr; Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)): sys_errlist, sys_nerr: From glibc 2.19 to glibc 2.31: _DEFAULT_SOURCE glibc 2.19 and earlier: _BSD_SOURCE
