setprogname(3) get or set the program name

Other Alias

getprogname

LIBRARY

Lb libbsd

SYNOPSIS

In bsd/stdlib.h Ft const char * Fn getprogname void Ft void Fn setprogname const char *progname

DESCRIPTION

The Fn getprogname and Fn setprogname functions manipulate the name of the current program. They are used by error-reporting routines to produce consistent output.

The Fn getprogname function returns the name of the program. If the name has not been set yet, it will return NULL

The Fn setprogname function sets the name of the program to be the last component of the Fa progname argument. Since a pointer to the given string is kept as the program name, it should not be modified for the rest of the program's lifetime.

In Fx , the name of the program is set by the start-up code that is run before Fn main ; thus, running Fn setprogname is not necessary. Programs that desire maximum portability should still call it; on another operating system, these functions may be implemented in a portability library. Calling Fn setprogname allows the aforementioned library to learn the program name without modifications to the start-up code.

HISTORY

These functions first appeared in Nx 1.6 , and made their way into Fx 4.4 .