FreeBSD manual
download PDF document: dup.2.pdf
DUP(2) FreeBSD System Calls Manual DUP(2)
NAME
dup, dup2 - duplicate an existing file descriptor
LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
int
dup(int oldd);
int
dup2(int oldd, int newd);
DESCRIPTION
The dup() system call duplicates an existing object descriptor and
returns its value to the calling process (newd = dup(oldd)). The
argument oldd is a small non-negative integer index in the per-process
descriptor table. The new descriptor returned by the call is the lowest
numbered descriptor currently not in use by the process.
The object referenced by the descriptor does not distinguish between oldd
and newd in any way. Thus if newd and oldd are duplicate references to
an open file, read(2), write(2) and lseek(2) calls all move a single
pointer into the file, and append mode, non-blocking I/O and asynchronous
I/O options are shared between the references. If a separate pointer
into the file is desired, a different object reference to the file must
be obtained by issuing an additional open(2) system call. The close-on-
exec flag on the new file descriptor is unset.
In dup2(), the value of the new descriptor newd is specified. If this
descriptor is already in use and oldd != newd, the descriptor is first
deallocated as if the close(2) system call had been used. If oldd is not
a valid descriptor, then newd is not closed. If oldd == newd and oldd is
a valid descriptor, then dup2() is successful, and does nothing.
RETURN VALUES
These calls return the new file descriptor if successful; otherwise the
value -1 is returned and the external variable errno is set to indicate
the cause of the error.
ERRORS
The dup() system call fails if:
[EBADF] The oldd argument is not a valid active descriptor
[EMFILE] Too many descriptors are active.
The dup2() system call fails if:
[EBADF] The oldd argument is not a valid active descriptor or
the newd argument is negative or exceeds the maximum
allowable descriptor number
SEE ALSO
accept(2), close(2), fcntl(2), getdtablesize(2), open(2), pipe(2),
The dup() function appeared in Version 3 AT&T UNIX. The dup2() function
appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11 December 1, 2017 FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11