getline, getdelim - delimited string input
Standard C library (libc
, -lc
)
#include <stdio.h>
ssize_t getline(char **restrict lineptr, size_t *restrict n,
FILE *restrict stream);
ssize_t getdelim(char **restrict lineptr, size_t *restrict n,
int delim, FILE *restrict stream);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
getline() reads an entire line from stream
,
storing the address of the buffer containing the text into
*lineptr
. The buffer is null-terminated and includes the
newline character, if one was found.
If *lineptr
is set to NULL before the call, then
getline() will allocate a buffer for storing the line.
This buffer should be freed by the user program even if
getline() failed.
Alternatively, before calling getline(),
*lineptr
can contain a pointer to a
malloc(3)-allocated buffer *n
bytes in size.
If the buffer is not large enough to hold the line,
getline() resizes it with realloc(3),
updating *lineptr
and *n
as necessary.
In either case, on a successful call, *lineptr
and
*n
will be updated to reflect the buffer address and allocated
size respectively.
getdelim() works like getline(),
except that a line delimiter other than newline can be specified as the
delimiter
argument. As with getline(), a
delimiter character is not added if one was not present in the input
before end of file was reached.
On success, getline() and getdelim() return the number of characters read, including the delimiter character, but not including the terminating null byte ('\0'). This value can be used to handle embedded null bytes in the line read.
Both functions return -1 on failure to read a line (including
end-of-file condition). In the event of a failure, errno
is set
to indicate the error.
If *lineptr
was set to NULL before the call, then the buffer
should be freed by the user program even on failure.
#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
FILE *stream;
char *line = NULL;
size_t len = 0;
ssize_t nread;
if (argc != 2) {
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s <file>\n", argv[0]);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
stream = fopen(argv[1], "r");
if (stream == NULL) {
perror("fopen");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
while ((nread = getline(&line, &len, stream)) != -1) {
printf("Retrieved line of length %zd:\n", nread);
fwrite(line, nread, 1, stdout);
}
free(line);
fclose(stream);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
Bad arguments (n
or lineptr
is NULL, or
stream
is not valid).
Allocation or reallocation of the line buffer failed.
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
Interface | Attribute | Value |
Thread safety | MT-Safe |
POSIX.1-2008.
GNU, POSIX.1-2008.