Manpages

PROPERTIES(3) BSD Library Functions Manual PROPERTIES(3)

NAME

properties_read, propery_find, properties_free — functions to allow creating simple property lists from ASCII file data

LIBRARY

System Utilities Library (libutil, −lutil)

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <libutil.h>

properties

properties_read(int fd);

char *

property_find(properties list, const char *name);

void

properties_free(properties list);

DESCRIPTION

typedef struct _properties {

struct _properties *next;

char *name;

char *value;

} *properties;

The function properties_read() reads name = value pairs from the file descriptor passed in fd and returns the head of a new property list, assuming that the file’s contents have been parsed properly, or NULL in case of error.

The property_find() function returns the associated value string for the property named name if found, otherwise NULL. The value returned may be up to PROPERTY_MAX_VALUE bytes in length.

The properties_free() function is used to free the structure returned by properties_read() when it is no longer needed.

FILE FORMAT

Each property in the file is assumed to have the format of name = value where name is an alphanumeric string (and any punctuation not including the ’=’ character) and value is an arbitary string of text terminated by a newline character. If newlines are desired, the entire value should be enclosed in { } (curly-bracket) characters. Any line beginning with a # or ; character is assumed to be a comment and will be ignored.

SEE ALSO

auth_getval(3)

BUGS

Simplistic.

AUTHORS

Jordan Hubbard

BSD October 7, 1998 BSD