— Extension: HOST_CHARSET

This macro indicates the basic character set and encoding used by the host: more precisely, the encoding used for character constants in preprocessor `#if' statements (the C "execution character set"). It is defined by safe-ctype.h, and will be an integer constant with one of the following values:

HOST_CHARSET_UNKNOWN

The host character set is unknown - that is, not one of the next two possibilities.

HOST_CHARSET_ASCII

The host character set is ASCII.

HOST_CHARSET_EBCDIC

The host character set is some variant of EBCDIC. (Only one of the nineteen EBCDIC varying characters is tested; exercise caution.)

— Replacement: void* alloca (size_t size)

This function allocates memory which will be automatically reclaimed after the procedure exits. The libiberty implementation does not free the memory immediately but will do so eventually during subsequent calls to this function. Memory is allocated using xmalloc under normal circumstances.

The header file alloca-conf.h can be used in conjunction with the GNU Autoconf test AC_FUNC_ALLOCA to test for and properly make available this function. The AC_FUNC_ALLOCA test requires that client code use a block of preprocessor code to be safe (see the Autoconf manual for more); this header incorporates that logic and more, including the possibility of a GCC built-in function.

— Extension: int asprintf (char **resptr, const char *format, ...)

Like sprintf, but instead of passing a pointer to a buffer, you pass a pointer to a pointer. This function will compute the size of the buffer needed, allocate memory with malloc, and store a pointer to the allocated memory in *resptr. The value returned is the same as sprintf would return. If memory could not be allocated, minus one is returned and NULL is stored in *resptr.

— Supplemental: int atexit (void (*f)())

Causes function f to be called at exit. Returns 0.

— Supplemental: char* basename (const char *name)

Returns a pointer to the last component of pathname name. Behavior is undefined if the pathname ends in a directory separator.

— Supplemental: int bcmp (char *x, char *y, int count)

Compares the first count bytes of two areas of memory. Returns zero if they are the same, nonzero otherwise. Returns zero if count is zero. A nonzero result only indicates a difference, it does not indicate any sorting order (say, by having a positive result mean x sorts before y).

— Supplemental: void bcopy (char *in, char *out, int length)

Copies length bytes from memory region in to region out. The use of bcopy is deprecated in new programs.

— Supplemental: void* bsearch (const void *key, const void *base, size_t nmemb, size_t size, int (*compar)(const void *, const void *))

Performs a search over an array of nmemb elements pointed to by base for a member that matches the object pointed to by key. The size of each member is specified by size. The array contents should be sorted in ascending order according to the compar comparison function. This routine should take two arguments pointing to the key and to an array member, in that order, and should return an integer less than, equal to, or greater than zero if the key object is respectively less than, matching, or greater than the array member.

— Extension: char** buildargv (char *sp)

Given a pointer to a string, parse the string extracting fields separated by whitespace and optionally enclosed within either single or double quotes (which are stripped off), and build a vector of pointers to copies of the string for each field. The input string remains unchanged. The last element of the vector is followed by a NULL element.

All of the memory for the pointer array and copies of the string is obtained from malloc. All of the memory can be returned to the system with the single function call freeargv, which takes the returned result of buildargv, as it's argument.

Returns a pointer to the argument vector if successful. Returns NULL if sp is NULL or if there is insufficient memory to complete building the argument vector.

If the input is a null string (as opposed to a NULL pointer), then buildarg returns an argument vector that has one arg, a null string.

— Supplemental: void bzero (char *mem, int count)

Zeros count bytes starting at mem. Use of this function is deprecated in favor of memset.

— Supplemental: void* calloc (size_t nelem, size_t elsize)

Uses malloc to allocate storage for nelem objects of elsize bytes each, then zeros the memory.

— Extension: char* choose_temp_base (void)

Return a prefix for temporary file names or NULL if unable to find one. The current directory is chosen if all else fails so the program is exited if a temporary directory can't be found (mktemp fails). The buffer for the result is obtained with xmalloc.

This function is provided for backwards compatability only. Its use is not recommended.

— Replacement: char* choose_tmpdir ()

Returns a pointer to a directory path suitable for creating temporary files in.

— Supplemental: long clock (void)

Returns an approximation of the CPU time used by the process as a clock_t; divide this number by `CLOCKS_PER_SEC' to get the number of seconds used.

— Extension: char* concat (const char *s1, const char *s2, ..., NULL)

Concatenate zero or more of strings and return the result in freshly xmalloced memory. Returns NULL if insufficient memory is available. The argument list is terminated by the first NULL pointer encountered. Pointers to empty strings are ignored.

— Extension: char** dupargv (char **vector)

Duplicate an argument vector. Simply scans through vector, duplicating each argument until the terminating NULL is found. Returns a pointer to the argument vector if successful. Returns NULL if there is insufficient memory to complete building the argument vector.

— Extension: int errno_max (void)

Returns the maximum errno value for which a corresponding symbolic name or message is available. Note that in the case where we use the sys_errlist supplied by the system, it is possible for there to be more symbolic names than messages, or vice versa. In fact, the manual page for perror(3C) explicitly warns that one should check the size of the table (sys_nerr) before indexing it, since new error codes may be added to the system before they are added to the table. Thus sys_nerr might be smaller than value implied by the largest errno value defined in <errno.h>.

We return the maximum value that can be used to obtain a meaningful symbolic name or message.

— Extension: int fdmatch (int fd1, int fd2)

Check to see if two open file descriptors refer to the same file. This is useful, for example, when we have an open file descriptor for an unnamed file, and the name of a file that we believe to correspond to that fd. This can happen when we are exec'd with an already open file (stdout for example) or from the SVR4 /proc calls that return open file descriptors for mapped address spaces. All we have to do is open the file by name and check the two file descriptors for a match, which is done by comparing major and minor device numbers and inode numbers.

— Supplemental: int ffs (int valu)

Find the first (least significant) bit set in valu. Bits are numbered from right to left, starting with bit 1 (corresponding to the value 1). If valu is zero, zero is returned.

— Replacement: int fnmatch (const char *pattern, const char *string, int flags)

Matches string against pattern, returning zero if it matches, FNM_NOMATCH if not. pattern may contain the wildcards ? to match any one character, * to match any zero or more characters, or a set of alternate characters in square brackets, like `[a-gt8]', which match one character (a through g, or t, or 8, in this example) if that one character is in the set. A set may be inverted (i.e., match anything except what's in the set) by giving ^ or ! as the first character in the set. To include those characters in the set, list them as anything other than the first character of the set. To include a dash in the set, list it last in the set. A backslash character makes the following character not special, so for example you could match against a literal asterisk with `\*'. To match a literal backslash, use `\\'.

flags controls various aspects of the matching process, and is a boolean OR of zero or more of the following values (defined in <fnmatch.h>):

FNM_PATHNAME

FNM_FILE_NAME

string is assumed to be a path name. No wildcard will ever match /.

FNM_NOESCAPE

Do not interpret backslashes as quoting the following special character.

FNM_PERIOD

A leading period (at the beginning of string, or if FNM_PATHNAME after a slash) is not matched by * or ? but must be matched explicitly.

FNM_LEADING_DIR

Means that string also matches pattern if some initial part of string matches, and is followed by / and zero or more characters. For example, `foo*' would match either `foobar' or `foobar/grill'.

FNM_CASEFOLD

Ignores case when performing the comparison.

— Extension: void freeargv (char **vector)

Free an argument vector that was built using buildargv. Simply scans through vector, freeing the memory for each argument until the terminating NULL is found, and then frees vector itself.

— Replacement: long get_run_time (void)

Returns the time used so far, in microseconds. If possible, this is the time used by this process, else it is the elapsed time since the process started.

— Supplemental: char* getcwd (char *pathname, int len)

Copy the absolute pathname for the current working directory into pathname, which is assumed to point to a buffer of at least len bytes, and return a pointer to the buffer. If the current directory's path doesn't fit in len characters, the result is NULL and errno is set. If pathname is a null pointer, getcwd will obtain len bytes of space using malloc.

— Supplemental: int getpagesize (void)

Returns the number of bytes in a page of memory. This is the granularity of many of the system memory management routines. No guarantee is made as to whether or not it is the same as the basic memory management hardware page size.

— Supplemental: char* getpwd (void)

Returns the current working directory. This implementation caches the result on the assumption that the process will not call chdir between calls to getpwd.

— Extension: void hex_init (void)

Initializes the array mapping the current character set to corresponding hex values. This function must be called before any call to hex_p or hex_value. If you fail to call it, a default ASCII-based table will normally be used on ASCII systems.

— Extension: int hex_p (int c)

Evaluates to non-zero if the given character is a valid hex character, or zero if it is not. Note that the value you pass will be cast to unsigned char within the macro.

— Extension: unsigned int hex_value (int c)

Returns the numeric equivalent of the given character when interpreted as a hexidecimal digit. The result is undefined if you pass an invalid hex digit. Note that the value you pass will be cast to unsigned char within the macro.

The hex_value macro returns unsigned int, rather than signed int, to make it easier to use in parsing addresses from hex dump files: a signed int would be sign-extended when converted to a wider unsigned type — like bfd_vma, on some systems.

— Supplemental: char* index (char *s, int c)

Returns a pointer to the first occurrence of the character c in the string s, or NULL if not found. The use of index is deprecated in new programs in favor of strchr.

— Supplemental: void insque (struct qelem *elem, struct qelem *pred)
— Supplemental: void remque (struct qelem *elem)

Routines to manipulate queues built from doubly linked lists. The insque routine inserts elem in the queue immediately after pred. The remque routine removes elem from its containing queue. These routines expect to be passed pointers to structures which have as their first members a forward pointer and a back pointer, like this prototype (although no prototype is provided):

          struct qelem {
            struct qelem *q_forw;
            struct qelem *q_back;
            char q_data[];
          };
     

— Extension: ISALPHA (c)
— Extension: ISALNUM (c)
— Extension: ISBLANK (c)
— Extension: ISCNTRL (c)
— Extension: ISDIGIT (c)
— Extension: ISGRAPH (c)
— Extension: ISLOWER (c)
— Extension: ISPRINT (c)
— Extension: ISPUNCT (c)
— Extension: ISSPACE (c)
— Extension: ISUPPER (c)
— Extension: ISXDIGIT (c)

These twelve macros are defined by safe-ctype.h. Each has the same meaning as the corresponding macro (with name in lowercase) defined by the standard header ctype.h. For example, ISALPHA returns true for alphabetic characters and false for others. However, there are two differences between these macros and those provided by ctype.h:

• These macros are guaranteed to have well-defined behavior for all values representable by signed char and unsigned char, and for EOF.
• These macros ignore the current locale; they are true for these fixed sets of characters:

  ALPHA	A-Za-z
  ALNUM	A-Za-z0-9
  BLANK	space tab
  CNTRL	!PRINT
  DIGIT	0-9
  GRAPH	ALNUM || PUNCT
  LOWER	a-z
  PRINT	GRAPH || space
  PUNCT	`~!@#$%^&*()_-=+[{]}\|;:'",<.>/?
  SPACE	space tab \n \r \f \v
  UPPER	A-Z
  XDIGIT	0-9A-Fa-f

  Note that, if the host character set is ASCII or a superset thereof, all these macros will return false for all values of char outside the range of 7-bit ASCII. In particular, both ISPRINT and ISCNTRL return false for characters with numeric values from 128 to 255.

— Extension: ISIDNUM (c)
— Extension: ISIDST (c)
— Extension: IS_VSPACE (c)
— Extension: IS_NVSPACE (c)
— Extension: IS_SPACE_OR_NUL (c)
— Extension: IS_ISOBASIC (c)

These six macros are defined by safe-ctype.h and provide additional character classes which are useful when doing lexical analysis of C or similar languages. They are true for the following sets of characters:

IDNUM	A-Za-z0-9_
IDST	A-Za-z_
VSPACE	\r \n
NVSPACE	space tab \f \v \0
SPACE_OR_NUL	VSPACE || NVSPACE
ISOBASIC	VSPACE || NVSPACE || PRINT

— Replacement: const char* lbasename (const char *name)

Given a pointer to a string containing a typical pathname (`/usr/src/cmd/ls/ls.c' for example), returns a pointer to the last component of the pathname (`ls.c' in this case). The returned pointer is guaranteed to lie within the original string. This latter fact is not true of many vendor C libraries, which return special strings or modify the passed strings for particular input.

In particular, the empty string returns the same empty string, and a path ending in / returns the empty string after it.

— Replacement: const char* lrealpath (const char *name)

Given a pointer to a string containing a pathname, returns a canonical version of the filename. Symlinks will be resolved, and “.” and “..” components will be simplified. The returned value will be allocated using malloc, or NULL will be returned on a memory allocation error.

— Extension: const char* make_relative_prefix (const char *progname, const char *bin_prefix, const char *prefix)

Given three paths progname, bin_prefix, prefix, return the path that is in the same position relative to progname's directory as prefix is relative to bin_prefix. That is, a string starting with the directory portion of progname, followed by a relative pathname of the difference between bin_prefix and prefix.

If progname does not contain any directory separators, make_relative_prefix will search PATH to find a program named progname. Also, if progname is a symbolic link, the symbolic link will be resolved.

For example, if bin_prefix is /alpha/beta/gamma/gcc/delta, prefix is /alpha/beta/gamma/omega/, and progname is /red/green/blue/gcc, then this function will return /red/green/blue/../../omega/.

The return value is normally allocated via malloc. If no relative prefix can be found, return NULL.

— Replacement: char* make_temp_file (const char *suffix)

Return a temporary file name (as a string) or NULL if unable to create one. suffix is a suffix to append to the file name. The string is malloced, and the temporary file has been created.

— Supplemental: void* memchr (const void *s, int c, size_t n)

This function searches memory starting at *s for the character c. The search only ends with the first occurrence of c, or after length characters; in particular, a null character does not terminate the search. If the character c is found within length characters of *s, a pointer to the character is returned. If c is not found, then NULL is returned.

— Supplemental: int memcmp (const void *x, const void *y, size_t count)

Compares the first count bytes of two areas of memory. Returns zero if they are the same, a value less than zero if x is lexically less than y, or a value greater than zero if x is lexically greater than y. Note that lexical order is determined as if comparing unsigned char arrays.

— Supplemental: void* memcpy (void *out, const void *in, size_t length)

Copies length bytes from memory region in to region out. Returns a pointer to out.

— Supplemental: void* memmove (void *from, const void *to, size_t count)

Copies count bytes from memory area from to memory area to, returning a pointer to to.

— Supplemental: void* mempcpy (void *out, const void *in, size_t length)

Copies length bytes from memory region in to region out. Returns a pointer to out + length.

— Supplemental: void* memset (void *s, int c, size_t count)

Sets the first count bytes of s to the constant byte c, returning a pointer to s.

— Replacement: int mkstemps (char *template, int suffix_len)

Generate a unique temporary file name from template. template has the form:

             path/ccXXXXXXsuffix
     

suffix_len tells us how long suffix is (it can be zero length). The last six characters of template before suffix must be `XXXXXX'; they are replaced with a string that makes the filename unique. Returns a file descriptor open on the file for reading and writing.

— Extension: int pexecute (const char *program, char * const *argv, const char *this_pname, const char *temp_base, char **errmsg_fmt, char **errmsg_arg, int flags)

Executes a program.

program and argv are the arguments to execv/execvp.

this_pname is name of the calling program (i.e., argv[0]).

temp_base is the path name, sans suffix, of a temporary file to use if needed. This is currently only needed for MS-DOS ports that don't use go32 (do any still exist?). Ports that don't need it can pass NULL.

(flags & PEXECUTE_SEARCH) is non-zero if PATH should be searched (??? It's not clear that GCC passes this flag correctly). (flags & PEXECUTE_FIRST) is nonzero for the first process in chain. (flags & PEXECUTE_FIRST) is nonzero for the last process in chain. The first/last flags could be simplified to only mark the last of a chain of processes but that requires the caller to always mark the last one (and not give up early if some error occurs). It's more robust to require the caller to mark both ends of the chain.

The result is the pid on systems like Unix where we fork/exec and on systems like WIN32 and OS/2 where we use spawn. It is up to the caller to wait for the child.

The result is the WEXITSTATUS on systems like MS-DOS where we spawn and wait for the child here.

Upon failure, errmsg_fmt and errmsg_arg are set to the text of the error message with an optional argument (if not needed, errmsg_arg is set to NULL), and −1 is returned. errno is available to the caller to use.

— Supplemental: void psignal (unsigned signo, char *message)

Print message to the standard error, followed by a colon, followed by the description of the signal specified by signo, followed by a newline.

— Supplemental: int putenv (const char *string)

Uses setenv or unsetenv to put string into the environment or remove it. If string is of the form `name=value' the string is added; if no `=' is present the name is unset/removed.

— Extension: int pwait (int pid, int *status, int flags)

Waits for a program started by pexecute to finish.

pid is the process id of the task to wait for. status is the `status' argument to wait. flags is currently unused (allows future enhancement without breaking upward compatibility). Pass 0 for now.

The result is the pid of the child reaped, or -1 for failure (errno says why).

On systems that don't support waiting for a particular child, pid is ignored. On systems like MS-DOS that don't really multitask pwait is just a mechanism to provide a consistent interface for the caller.

— Supplement: long int random (void)
— Supplement: void srandom (unsigned int seed)
— Supplement: void* initstate (unsigned int seed, void *arg_state, unsigned long n)
— Supplement: void* setstate (void *arg_state)

Random number functions. random returns a random number in the range 0 to LONG_MAX. srandom initializes the random number generator to some starting point determined by seed (else, the values returned by random are always the same for each run of the program). initstate and setstate allow fine-grained control over the state of the random number generator.

— Extension: char* reconcat (char *optr, const char *s1, ..., NULL)

Same as concat, except that if optr is not NULL it is freed after the string is created. This is intended to be useful when you're extending an existing string or building up a string in a loop:

            str = reconcat (str, "pre-", str, NULL);
     

— Supplemental: int rename (const char *old, const char *new)

Renames a file from old to new. If new already exists, it is removed.

— Supplemental: char* rindex (const char *s, int c)

Returns a pointer to the last occurrence of the character c in the string s, or NULL if not found. The use of rindex is deprecated in new programs in favor of strrchr.

— Supplemental: int setenv (const char *name, const char *value, int overwrite)
— Supplemental: void unsetenv (const char *name)

setenv adds name to the environment with value value. If the name was already present in the environment, the new value will be stored only if overwrite is nonzero. The companion unsetenv function removes name from the environment. This implementation is not safe for multithreaded code.

— Extension: int signo_max (void)

Returns the maximum signal value for which a corresponding symbolic name or message is available. Note that in the case where we use the sys_siglist supplied by the system, it is possible for there to be more symbolic names than messages, or vice versa. In fact, the manual page for psignal(3b) explicitly warns that one should check the size of the table (NSIG) before indexing it, since new signal codes may be added to the system before they are added to the table. Thus NSIG might be smaller than value implied by the largest signo value defined in <signal.h>.

We return the maximum value that can be used to obtain a meaningful symbolic name or message.

— Supplemental: int sigsetmask (int set)

Sets the signal mask to the one provided in set and returns the old mask (which, for libiberty's implementation, will always be the value 1).

— Supplemental: int snprintf (char *buf, size_t n, const char *format, ...)

This function is similar to sprintf, but it will print at most n characters. On error the return value is -1, otherwise it returns the number of characters that would have been printed had n been sufficiently large, regardless of the actual value of n. Note some pre-C99 system libraries do not implement this correctly so users cannot generally rely on the return value if the system version of this function is used.

— Extension: char* spaces (int count)

Returns a pointer to a memory region filled with the specified number of spaces and null terminated. The returned pointer is valid until at least the next call.

— Supplemental: char* stpcpy (char *dst, const char *src)

Copies the string src into dst. Returns a pointer to dst + strlen(src).

— Supplemental: char* stpncpy (char *dst, const char *src, size_t len)

Copies the string src into dst, copying exactly len and padding with zeros if necessary. If len < strlen(src) then return dst + len, otherwise returns dst + strlen(src).

— Supplemental: int strcasecmp (const char *s1, const char *s2)

A case-insensitive strcmp.

— Supplemental: char* strchr (const char *s, int c)

Returns a pointer to the first occurrence of the character c in the string s, or NULL if not found. If c is itself the null character, the results are undefined.

— Supplemental: char* strdup (const char *s)

Returns a pointer to a copy of s in memory obtained from malloc, or NULL if insufficient memory was available.

— Replacement: const char* strerrno (int errnum)

Given an error number returned from a system call (typically returned in errno), returns a pointer to a string containing the symbolic name of that error number, as found in <errno.h>.

If the supplied error number is within the valid range of indices for symbolic names, but no name is available for the particular error number, then returns the string `Error num', where num is the error number.

If the supplied error number is not within the range of valid indices, then returns NULL.

The contents of the location pointed to are only guaranteed to be valid until the next call to strerrno.

— Supplemental: char* strerror (int errnoval)

Maps an errno number to an error message string, the contents of which are implementation defined. On systems which have the external variables sys_nerr and sys_errlist, these strings will be the same as the ones used by perror.

If the supplied error number is within the valid range of indices for the sys_errlist, but no message is available for the particular error number, then returns the string `Error num', where num is the error number.

If the supplied error number is not a valid index into sys_errlist, returns NULL.

The returned string is only guaranteed to be valid only until the next call to strerror.

— Supplemental: int strncasecmp (const char *s1, const char *s2)

A case-insensitive strncmp.

— Supplemental: int strncmp (const char *s1, const char *s2, size_t n)

Compares the first n bytes of two strings, returning a value as strcmp.

— Supplemental: char* strrchr (const char *s, int c)

Returns a pointer to the last occurrence of the character c in the string s, or NULL if not found. If c is itself the null character, the results are undefined.

— Supplemental: const char * strsignal (int signo)

Maps an signal number to an signal message string, the contents of which are implementation defined. On systems which have the external variable sys_siglist, these strings will be the same as the ones used by psignal().

If the supplied signal number is within the valid range of indices for the sys_siglist, but no message is available for the particular signal number, then returns the string `Signal num', where num is the signal number.

If the supplied signal number is not a valid index into sys_siglist, returns NULL.

The returned string is only guaranteed to be valid only until the next call to strsignal.

— Extension: const char* strsigno (int signo)

Given an signal number, returns a pointer to a string containing the symbolic name of that signal number, as found in <signal.h>.

If the supplied signal number is within the valid range of indices for symbolic names, but no name is available for the particular signal number, then returns the string `Signal num', where num is the signal number.

If the supplied signal number is not within the range of valid indices, then returns NULL.

The contents of the location pointed to are only guaranteed to be valid until the next call to strsigno.

— Supplemental: char* strstr (const char *string, const char *sub)

This function searches for the substring sub in the string string, not including the terminating null characters. A pointer to the first occurrence of sub is returned, or NULL if the substring is absent. If sub points to a string with zero length, the function returns string.

— Supplemental: double strtod (const char *string, char **endptr)

This ISO C function converts the initial portion of string to a double. If endptr is not NULL, a pointer to the character after the last character used in the conversion is stored in the location referenced by endptr. If no conversion is performed, zero is returned and the value of string is stored in the location referenced by endptr.

— Extension: int strtoerrno (const char *name)

Given the symbolic name of a error number (e.g., EACCES), map it to an errno value. If no translation is found, returns 0.

— Supplemental: long int strtol (const char *string, char **endptr, int base)
— Supplemental: unsigned long int strtoul (const char *string, char **endptr, int base)

The strtol function converts the string in string to a long integer value according to the given base, which must be between 2 and 36 inclusive, or be the special value 0. If base is 0, strtol will look for the prefixes 0 and 0x to indicate bases 8 and 16, respectively, else default to base 10. When the base is 16 (either explicitly or implicitly), a prefix of 0x is allowed. The handling of endptr is as that of strtod above. The strtoul function is the same, except that the converted value is unsigned.

— Extension: int strtosigno (const char *name)

Given the symbolic name of a signal, map it to a signal number. If no translation is found, returns 0.

— Supplemental: char* tmpnam (char *s)

This function attempts to create a name for a temporary file, which will be a valid file name yet not exist when tmpnam checks for it. s must point to a buffer of at least L_tmpnam bytes, or be NULL. Use of this function creates a security risk, and it must not be used in new projects. Use mkstemp instead.

— Extension: int vasprintf (char **resptr, const char *format, va_list args)

Like vsprintf, but instead of passing a pointer to a buffer, you pass a pointer to a pointer. This function will compute the size of the buffer needed, allocate memory with malloc, and store a pointer to the allocated memory in *resptr. The value returned is the same as vsprintf would return. If memory could not be allocated, minus one is returned and NULL is stored in *resptr.

— Supplemental: int vfork (void)

Emulates vfork by calling fork and returning its value.

— Supplemental: int vprintf (const char *format, va_list ap)
— Supplemental: int vfprintf (FILE *stream, const char *format, va_list ap)
— Supplemental: int vsprintf (char *str, const char *format, va_list ap)

These functions are the same as printf, fprintf, and sprintf, respectively, except that they are called with a va_list instead of a variable number of arguments. Note that they do not call va_end; this is the application's responsibility. In libiberty they are implemented in terms of the nonstandard but common function _doprnt.

— Supplemental: int vsnprintf (char *buf, size_t n, const char *format, va_list ap)

This function is similar to vsprintf, but it will print at most n characters. On error the return value is -1, otherwise it returns the number of characters that would have been printed had n been sufficiently large, regardless of the actual value of n. Note some pre-C99 system libraries do not implement this correctly so users cannot generally rely on the return value if the system version of this function is used.

— Supplemental: int waitpid (int pid, int *status, int)

This is a wrapper around the wait function. Any “special” values of pid depend on your implementation of wait, as does the return value. The third argument is unused in libiberty.

— Function: int xatexit (void (*fn) (void))

Behaves as the standard atexit function, but with no limit on the number of registered functions. Returns 0 on success, or −1 on failure. If you use xatexit to register functions, you must use xexit to terminate your program.

— Replacement: void* xcalloc (size_t nelem, size_t elsize)

Allocate memory without fail, and set it to zero. This routine functions like calloc, but will behave the same as xmalloc if memory cannot be found.

— Replacement: void xexit (int code)

Terminates the program. If any functions have been registered with the xatexit replacement function, they will be called first. Termination is handled via the system's normal exit call.

— Replacement: void* xmalloc (size_t)

Allocate memory without fail. If malloc fails, this will print a message to stderr (using the name set by xmalloc_set_program_name, if any) and then call xexit. Note that it is therefore safe for a program to contain #define malloc xmalloc in its source.

— Replacement: void xmalloc_failed (size_t)

This function is not meant to be called by client code, and is listed here for completeness only. If any of the allocation routines fail, this function will be called to print an error message and terminate execution.

— Replacement: void xmalloc_set_program_name (const char *name)

You can use this to set the name of the program used by xmalloc_failed when printing a failure message.

— Replacement: void* xmemdup (void *input, size_t copy_size, size_t alloc_size)

Duplicates a region of memory without fail. First, alloc_size bytes are allocated, then copy_size bytes from input are copied into it, and the new memory is returned. If fewer bytes are copied than were allocated, the remaining memory is zeroed.

— Replacement: void* xrealloc (void *ptr, size_t size)

Reallocate memory without fail. This routine functions like realloc, but will behave the same as xmalloc if memory cannot be found.

— Replacement: char* xstrdup (const char *s)

Duplicates a character string without fail, using xmalloc to obtain memory.

— Replacement: char* xstrerror (int errnum)

Behaves exactly like the standard strerror function, but will never return a NULL pointer.