FreeBSD manual

download PDF document: property.3.pdf

PROPERTIES(3) FreeBSD Library Functions Manual PROPERTIES(3)
NAME properties_read, property_find, properties_free - functions to allow creating simple property lists from ASCII file data
LIBRARY System Utilities Library (libutil, -lutil)
SYNOPSIS #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 arbitrary 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.
AUTHORS Jordan Hubbard
BUGS Simplistic.
FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11 October 7, 1998 FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11