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TRUNCATE(2) FreeBSD System Calls Manual TRUNCATE(2)
NAME
truncate, ftruncate - truncate or extend a file to a specified length
LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
int
truncate(const char *path, off_t length);
int
ftruncate(int fd, off_t length);
DESCRIPTION
The truncate() system call causes the file named by path or referenced by
fd to be truncated or extended to length bytes in size. If the file was
larger than this size, the extra data is lost. If the file was smaller
than this size, it will be extended as if by writing bytes with the value
zero.
The ftruncate() system call causes the file or shared memory object
backing the file descriptor fd to be truncated or extended to length
bytes in size. The file descriptor must be a valid file descriptor open
for writing. The file position pointer associated with the file
descriptor fd will not be modified.
RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the
value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the
error. If the file to be modified is not a directory or a regular file,
the truncate() call has no effect and returns the value 0.
ERRORS
The truncate() system call succeeds unless:
[ENOTDIR] A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
[ENAMETOOLONG] A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or
an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.
[ENOENT] The named file does not exist.
[EACCES] Search permission is denied for a component of the
path prefix.
[EACCES] The named file is not writable by the user.
[ELOOP] Too many symbolic links were encountered in
translating the pathname.
[EPERM] The named file has its immutable or append-only flag
set, see the chflags(2) manual page for more
information.
[EISDIR] The named file is a directory.
size.
[EINVAL] The length argument was less than 0.
[EIO] An I/O error occurred updating the inode.
[EINTEGRITY] Corrupted data was detected while reading from the
file system.
[EFAULT] The path argument points outside the process's
allocated address space.
The ftruncate() system call succeeds unless:
[EBADF] The fd argument is not a valid descriptor.
[EINVAL] The fd argument references a file descriptor that is
not a regular file or shared memory object.
[EINVAL] The fd descriptor is not open for writing.
SEE ALSO
chflags(2), open(2), shm_open(2)
HISTORY
The truncate() and ftruncate() system calls appeared in 4.2BSD.
BUGS
These calls should be generalized to allow ranges of bytes in a file to
be discarded.
Historically, the use of truncate() or ftruncate() to extend a file was
not portable, but this behavior became required in IEEE Std 1003.1-2008
("POSIX.1").
FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11 March 30, 2020 FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11