errno.h
errno.h is a header file in the standard library of the C programming language. It defines macros for reporting and retrieving error conditions using the symbol errno
(short for "error number").[1]
C standard library (libc) |
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General topics |
Miscellaneous headers |
errno
acts like an integer variable. A value (the error number) is stored in errno
by certain library functions when they detect errors. At program startup, the value stored is zero. Library functions store only values greater than zero. Any library function can alter the value stored before return, whether or not they detect errors.[2] Most functions indicate that they detected an error by returning a special value, typically NULL for functions that return pointers, and -1 for functions that return integers. A few functions require the caller to preset errno
to zero and test it afterwards to see if an error was detected.
The errno
macro expands to an lvalue with type int
, sometimes with the extern
and/or volatile
type specifiers depending upon the platform.[3] Originally this was a static memory location, but macros are almost always used today to allow for multi-threading, so that each thread will see its own thread-local error number.
The header file also defines macros that expand to integer constants that represent the error codes. The C standard library only requires three to be defined:[2]
EDOM
- Results from a parameter outside a function's domain, e.g.
sqrt(-1)
ERANGE
- Results from a result outside a function's range, e.g.
strtol("0xfffffffff", NULL, 0)
on systems with a 32-bit widelong
EILSEQ (Required since 1994 Amendment 1 to C89 standard)[4]
- Results from an illegal byte sequence, e.g.
mbstowcs(buf, "\xff", 1)
on systems that use UTF-8.
POSIX compliant operating systems like AIX, Linux or Solaris include many other error values, many of which are used much more often than the above ones, such as EACCES for when a file cannot be opened for reading.[5] C++11 additionally defines many of the same values found within the POSIX specification.[6]
Traditionally, the first page of Unix system manuals, named intro(2), lists all errno.h macros, but this is not the case with Linux, where these macros are instead listed in the errno(3).[7]
An errno
can be translated to a descriptive string using strerror (defined in string.h) or a BSD extension called sys_errlist
. The translation can be printed directly to the standard error stream using perror (defined in stdio.h). As strerror
in many Unix-like systems is not thread-safe, a thread-safe version strerror_r
is used, but conflicting definitions from POSIX and GNU makes it even less portable than the sys_errlist
table.[8]
GLIBC macros
The GNU C library (GLIBC) provides the additional POSIX error values macros in the header file errno.h
.[9] These are the descriptions of the macros provided by strerror, excluding 41 and 58 as they are not in the POSIX standard:
EPERM (1)
- Operation not permitted
ENOENT (2)
- No such file or directory
ESRCH (3)
- No such process
EINTR (4)
- Interrupted system call
EIO (5)
- Input/output error
ENXIO (6)
- No such device or address
E2BIG (7)
- Argument list too long
ENOEXEC (8)
- Exec format error
EBADF (9)
- Bad file descriptor
ECHILD (10)
- No child processes
EAGAIN (11)
- Resource temporarily unavailable
ENOMEM (12)
- Cannot allocate memory
EACCES (13)
- Permission denied
EFAULT (14)
- Bad address
ENOTBLK (15)
- Block device required
EBUSY (16)
- Device or resource busy
EEXIST (17)
- File exists
EXDEV (18)
- Invalid cross-device link
ENODEV (19)
- No such device
ENOTDIR (20)
- Not a directory
EISDIR (21)
- Is a directory
EINVAL (22)
- Invalid argument
ENFILE (23)
- Too many open files in system
EMFILE (24)
- Too many open files
ENOTTY (25)
- Inappropriate ioctl for device
ETXTBSY (26)
- Text file busy
EFBIG (27)
- File too large
ENOSPC (28)
- No space left on device
ESPIPE (29)
- Illegal seek
EROFS (30)
- Read-only file system
EMLINK (31)
- Too many links
EPIPE (32)
- Broken pipe
EDOM (33)
- Numerical argument out of domain
ERANGE (34)
- Numerical result out of range
EDEADLK (35)
- Resource deadlock avoided
ENAMETOOLONG (36)
- File name too long
ENOLCK (37)
- No locks available
ENOSYS (38)
- Function not implemented
ENOTEMPTY (39)
- Directory not empty
ELOOP (40)
- Too many levels of symbolic links
ENOMSG (42)
- No message of desired type
EIDRM (43)
- Identifier removed
ECHRNG (44)
- Channel number out of range
EL2NSYNC (45)
- Level 2 not synchronized
EL3HLT (46)
- Level 3 halted
EL3RST (47)
- Level 3 reset
ELNRNG (48)
- Link number out of range
EUNATCH (49)
- Protocol driver not attached
ENOCSI (50)
- No CSI structure available
EL2HLT (51)
- Level 2 halted
EBADE (52)
- Invalid exchange
EBADR (53)
- Invalid request descriptor
EXFULL (54)
- Exchange full
ENOANO (55)
- No anode
EBADRQC (56)
- Invalid request code
EBADSLT (57)
- Invalid slot
EBFONT (59)
- Bad font file format
ENOSTR (60)
- Device not a stream
ENODATA (61)
- No data available
ETIME (62)
- Timer expired
ENOSR (63)
- Out of streams resources
ENONET (64)
- Machine is not on the network
ENOPKG (65)
- Package not installed
EREMOTE (66)
- Object is remote
ENOLINK (67)
- Link has been severed
EADV (68)
- Advertise error
ESRMNT (69)
- Srmount error
ECOMM (70)
- Communication error on send
EPROTO (71)
- Protocol error
EMULTIHOP (72)
- Multihop attempted
EDOTDOT (73)
- RFS specific error
EBADMSG (74)
- Bad message
EOVERFLOW (75)
- Value too large for defined data type
ENOTUNIQ (76)
- Name not unique on network
EBADFD (77)
- File descriptor in bad state
EREMCHG (78)
- Remote address changed
ELIBACC (79)
- Can not access a needed shared library
ELIBBAD (80)
- Accessing a corrupted shared library
ELIBSCN (81)
- .lib section in a.out corrupted
ELIBMAX (82)
- Attempting to link in too many shared libraries
ELIBEXEC (83)
- Cannot exec a shared library directly
EILSEQ (84)
- Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character
ERESTART (85)
- Interrupted system call should be restarted
ESTRPIPE (86)
- Streams pipe error
EUSERS (87)
- Too many users
ENOTSOCK (88)
- Socket operation on non-socket
EDESTADDRREQ (89)
- Destination address required
EMSGSIZE (90)
- Message too long
EPROTOTYPE (91)
- Protocol wrong type for socket
ENOPROTOOPT (92)
- Protocol not available
EPROTONOSUPPORT (93)
- Protocol not supported
ESOCKTNOSUPPORT (94)
- Socket type not supported
EOPNOTSUPP (95)
- Operation not supported
EPFNOSUPPORT (96)
- Protocol family not supported
EAFNOSUPPORT (97)
- Address family not supported by protocol
EADDRINUSE (98)
- Address already in use
EADDRNOTAVAIL (99)
- Cannot assign requested address
ENETDOWN (100)
- Network is down
ENETUNREACH (101)
- Network is unreachable
ENETRESET (102)
- Network dropped connection on reset
ECONNABORTED (103)
- Software caused connection abort
ECONNRESET (104)
- Connection reset by peer
ENOBUFS (105)
- No buffer space available
EISCONN (106)
- Transport endpoint is already connected
ENOTCONN (107)
- Transport endpoint is not connected
ESHUTDOWN (108)
- Cannot send after transport endpoint shutdown
ETOOMANYREFS (109)
- Too many references: cannot splice
ETIMEDOUT (110)
- Connection timed out
ECONNREFUSED (111)
- Connection refused
EHOSTDOWN (112)
- Host is down
EHOSTUNREACH (113)
- No route to host
EALREADY (114)
- Operation already in progress
EINPROGRESS (115)
- Operation now in progress
ESTALE (116)
- Stale file handle
EUCLEAN (117)
- Structure needs cleaning
ENOTNAM (118)
- Not a XENIX named type file
ENAVAIL (119)
- No XENIX semaphores available
EISNAM (120)
- Is a named type file
EREMOTEIO (121)
- Remote I/O error
EDQUOT (122)
- Disk quota exceeded
ENOMEDIUM (123)
- No medium found
EMEDIUMTYPE (124)
- Wrong medium type
ECANCELED (125)
- Operation canceled
ENOKEY (126)
- Required key not available
EKEYEXPIRED (127)
- Key has expired
EKEYREVOKED (128)
- Key has been revoked
EKEYREJECTED (129)
- Key was rejected by service
EOWNERDEAD (130)
- Owner died
ENOTRECOVERABLE (131)
- State not recoverable
ERFKILL (132)
- Operation not possible due to RF-kill
EHWPOISON (133)
- Memory page has hardware error
References
- International Standard for Programming Language C (C11), ISO/IEC 9899:2011, p. 205
- International Standard for Programming Language C (C99), ISO/IEC 9899:1999, p. 186
- "Checking for Errors". The GNU C Library (glibc). GNU Project. 2014-02-08. Retrieved 2014-06-25.
- "A brief description of Normative Addendum 1". Retrieved 2013-09-12.
- : system error numbers – Base Definitions Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 4 from The Open Group
- "Error numbers - cppreference.com". Retrieved 2015-05-08.
- Stevens & Rago 2013, p. 14.
- McCabe, Colin. "The problem with strerror". www.club.cc.cmu.edu.
- "Error Codes (The GNU C Library)". www.gnu.org. Retrieved 2023-10-21.
Bibliography
- Stevens, W. Richard; Rago, Stephen A. (May 24, 2013). Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment (Third ed.). Addison-Wesley Professional. ISBN 978-0321637734. Retrieved 27 February 2015.
External links
- – FreeBSD System Calls Manual
- – Linux Programmer's Manual – Library Functions
- GNU C library manual: Error codes
- Lists of errno values on Linux, both numeric and symbolic