GETLINE(3)               BSD Library Functions Manual               GETLINE(3)

NAME
     getdelim, getline -- get a line from a stream

LIBRARY
     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
     #include <stdio.h>

     ssize_t
     getdelim(char ** restrict linep, size_t * restrict linecapp,
         int delimiter, FILE * restrict stream);

     ssize_t
     getline(char ** restrict linep, size_t * restrict linecapp,
         FILE * restrict stream);

DESCRIPTION
     The getdelim() function reads a line from stream, delimited by the char-
     acter delimiter.  The getline() function is equivalent to getdelim() with
     the newline character as the delimiter.  The delimiter character is
     included as part of the line, unless the end of the file is reached.

     The caller may provide a pointer to a malloced buffer for the line in
     *linep, and the capacity of that buffer in *linecapp.  These functions
     expand the buffer as needed, as if via realloc().  If linep points to a
     NULL pointer, a new buffer will be allocated.  In either case, *linep and
     *linecapp will be updated accordingly.

RETURN VALUES
     The getdelim() and getline() functions return the number of characters
     written, excluding the terminating NUL character.  The value -1 is
     returned if an error occurs, or if end-of-file is reached.

EXAMPLES
     The following code fragment reads lines from a file and writes them to
     standard output.  The fwrite() function is used in case the line contains
     embedded NUL characters.

           char *line = NULL;
           size_t linecap = 0;
           ssize_t linelen;
           while ((linelen = getline(&line, &linecap, fp)) > 0)
                   fwrite(line, linelen, 1, stdout);

ERRORS
     These functions may fail if:

     [EINVAL]           Either linep or linecapp is NULL.

     [EOVERFLOW]        No delimiter was found in the first SSIZE_MAX charac-
                        ters.

     These functions may also fail due to any of the errors specified for
     fgets() and malloc().

SEE ALSO
     fgetln(3), fgets(3), malloc(3)

STANDARDS
     The getdelim() and getline() functions conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-2008
     (``POSIX.1'').

HISTORY
     These routines first appeared in FreeBSD 8.0.

BUGS
     There are no wide character versions of getdelim() or getline().

BSD                            November 30, 2010                           BSD