summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/man3/tmpnam.3
blob: c8bb18e651cb1fb179a29c123e9ba3e1710efa12 (plain) (blame)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
.\" Copyright (c) 1999 Andries Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl)
.\"
.\" %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM)
.\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
.\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
.\" preserved on all copies.
.\"
.\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
.\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
.\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
.\" permission notice identical to this one.
.\"
.\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
.\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date.  The author(s) assume no
.\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
.\" the use of the information contained herein.  The author(s) may not
.\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
.\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
.\" professionally.
.\"
.\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
.\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
.\" %%%LICENSE_END
.\"
.\" 2003-11-15, aeb, added tmpnam_r
.\"
.TH TMPNAM 3  2017-09-15 "" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
tmpnam, tmpnam_r \- create a name for a temporary file
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #include <stdio.h>
.PP
.BI "char *tmpnam(char *" s );
.BI "char *tmpnam_r(char *" s );
.fi
.PP
.RS -4
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
.BR feature_test_macros (7)):
.RE
.PP
.BR tmpnam_r ()
.PD 0
.ad l
.RS 4
.TP 4
Since glibc 2.19:
_DEFAULT_SOURCE
.TP
Up to and including glibc 2.19:
_BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE
.RE
.ad
.PD
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B Note:
avoid using these functions; use
.BR mkstemp (3)
or
.BR tmpfile (3)
instead.
.PP
The
.BR tmpnam ()
function returns a pointer to a string that is a valid filename,
and such that a file with this name did not exist at some point
in time, so that naive programmers may think it
a suitable name for a temporary file.
If the argument
.I s
is NULL, this name is generated in an internal static buffer
and may be overwritten by the next call to
.BR tmpnam ().
If
.I s
is not NULL, the name is copied to the character array (of length
at least
.IR L_tmpnam )
pointed to by
.I s
and the value
.I s
is returned in case of success.
.PP
The created pathname has a directory prefix
.IR P_tmpdir .
(Both
.I L_tmpnam
and
.I P_tmpdir
are defined in
.IR <stdio.h> ,
just like the
.B TMP_MAX
mentioned below.)
.PP
The
.BR tmpnam_r ()
function performs the same task as
.BR tmpnam (),
but returns NULL (to indicate an error) if
.I s
is NULL.
.SH RETURN VALUE
These functions return a pointer to a unique temporary
filename, or NULL if a unique name cannot be generated.
.SH ERRORS
No errors are defined.
.SH ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
.BR attributes (7).
.TS
allbox;
lb lb lb
l l l.
Interface	Attribute	Value
T{
.BR tmpnam ()
T}	Thread safety	MT-Unsafe race:tmpnam/!s
T{
.BR tmpnam_r ()
T}	Thread safety	MT-Safe
.TE
.SH CONFORMING TO
.BR tmpnam ():
SVr4, 4.3BSD, C89, C99, POSIX.1-2001.
POSIX.1-2008 marks
.BR tmpnam ()
as obsolete.
.PP
.BR tmpnam_r ()
is a nonstandard extension that is also available
.\" Appears to be on Solaris
on a few other systems.
.SH NOTES
The
.BR tmpnam ()
function generates a different string each time it is called,
up to
.B TMP_MAX
times.
If it is called more than
.B TMP_MAX
times,
the behavior is implementation defined.
.PP
Although these functions generate names that are difficult to guess,
it is nevertheless possible that between the time that
the pathname is returned and the time that the program opens it,
another program might create that pathname using
.BR open (2),
or create it as a symbolic link.
This can lead to security holes.
To avoid such possibilities, use the
.BR open (2)
.B O_EXCL
flag to open the pathname.
Or better yet, use
.BR mkstemp (3)
or
.BR tmpfile (3).
.PP
Portable applications that use threads cannot call
.BR tmpnam ()
with a NULL argument if either
.B _POSIX_THREADS
or
.B _POSIX_THREAD_SAFE_FUNCTIONS
is defined.
.SH BUGS
Never use these functions.
Use
.BR mkstemp (3)
or
.BR tmpfile (3)
instead.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR mkstemp (3),
.BR mktemp (3),
.BR tempnam (3),
.BR tmpfile (3)
.SH COLOPHON
This page is part of release 5.10 of the Linux
.I man-pages
project.
A description of the project,
information about reporting bugs,
and the latest version of this page,
can be found at
\%https://www.kernel.org/doc/man\-pages/.