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REALPATH(3) FreeBSD Library Functions Manual REALPATH(3)
NAME
realpath - returns the canonicalized absolute pathname
LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <stdlib.h>
char *
realpath(const char * restrict pathname, char * restrict resolved_path);
DESCRIPTION
The realpath() function resolves all symbolic links, extra "/" characters
and references to /./ and /../ in pathname, and copies the resulting
absolute pathname into the memory pointed to by resolved_path. The
resolved_path argument must point to a buffer capable of storing at least
PATH_MAX characters, or be NULL.
The realpath() function will resolve both absolute and relative paths and
return the absolute pathname corresponding to pathname. All components
of pathname must exist when realpath() is called, and all but the last
component must name either directories or symlinks pointing to the
directories.
RETURN VALUES
The realpath() function returns resolved_path on success. If the
function was supplied NULL as resolved_path, and operation did not cause
errors, the returned value is a null-terminated string in a buffer
allocated by a call to malloc(3). If an error occurs, realpath() returns
NULL, and if resolved_path is not NULL, the array that it points to
contains the pathname which caused the problem.
ERRORS
The function realpath() may fail and set the external variable errno for
any of the errors specified for the library functions lstat(2),
readlink(2) and getcwd(3).
SEE ALSO
getcwd(3)
HISTORY
The realpath() function first appeared in 4.4BSD.
CAVEATS
This implementation of realpath() differs slightly from the Solaris
implementation. The 4.4BSD version always returns absolute pathnames,
whereas the Solaris implementation will, under certain circumstances,
return a relative resolved_path when given a relative pathname.
FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11 May 11, 2012 FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11