FMEMOPEN(3)		   Linux Programmer's Manual		   FMEMOPEN(3)



NAME
       fmemopen -  open memory as stream

SYNOPSIS
       #include <stdio.h>

       FILE *fmemopen(void *buf, size_t size, const char *mode);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       fmemopen():
	   Since glibc 2.10:
	       _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200809L
	   Before glibc 2.10:
	       _GNU_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION
       The  fmemopen()	function opens a stream that permits the access speci-
       fied by mode.  The stream allows I/O to be performed on the  string  or
       memory buffer pointed to by buf.

       The  mode argument specifies the semantics of I/O on the stream, and is
       one of the following:

       r       The stream is opened for reading.

       w       The stream is opened for writing.

       a       Append; open the stream for writing, with  the  initial	buffer
	       position set to the first null byte.

       r+      Open the stream for reading and writing.

       w+      Open  the  stream for reading and writing.  The buffer contents
	       are truncated (i.e., '\0' is placed in the first	 byte  of  the
	       buffer).

       a+      Append;	open the stream for reading and writing, with the ini-
	       tial buffer position set to the first null byte.

       The stream maintains the notion of a  current  position,	 the  location
       where  the  next I/O operation will be performed.  The current position
       is implicitly updated by I/O operations.	 It can be explicitly  updated
       using fseek(3), and determined using ftell(3).  In all modes other than
       append, the initial position is set to the start	 of  the  buffer.   In
       append  mode, if no null byte is found within the buffer, then the ini-
       tial position is size+1.

       If buf is specified as NULL, then fmemopen() allocates a buffer of size
       bytes.  This is useful for an application that wants to write data to a
       temporary buffer and then read it back again.  The initial position  is
       set to the start of the buffer.	The buffer is automatically freed when
       the stream is closed.  Note that the caller has	no  way	 to  obtain  a
       pointer	to  the	 temporary  buffer  allocated  by  this	 call (but see
       open_memstream(3)).

       If buf is not NULL, then it should point to a buffer of	at  least  len
       bytes allocated by the caller.

       When  a	stream that has been opened for writing is flushed (fflush(3))
       or closed (fclose(3)), a null byte is written at the end of the	buffer
       if  there  is  space.   The  caller should ensure that an extra byte is
       available in the buffer (and that size counts that byte) to  allow  for
       this.

       In  a stream opened for reading, null bytes ('\0') in the buffer do not
       cause read operations to return an end-of-file indication.  A read from
       the buffer will indicate end-of-file only when the current buffer posi-
       tion advances size bytes past the start of the buffer.

       Write operations take place either at the current position  (for	 modes
       other  than  append),  or at the current size of the stream (for append
       modes).

       Attempts to write more than size bytes  to  the	buffer	result	in  an
       error.	By  default,  such  errors  will be visible (by the absence of
       data) only when the stdio buffer is flushed.  Disabling buffering  with
       the  following  call  may  be useful to detect errors at the time of an
       output operation:

	   setbuf(stream, NULL);

RETURN VALUE
       Upon successful completion, fmemopen() returns a FILE pointer.	Other-
       wise, NULL is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

VERSIONS
       fmemopen() was already available in glibc 1.0.x.

ATTRIBUTES
       For   an	  explanation	of   the  terms	 used  in  this	 section,  see
       attributes(7).

       +------------+---------------+---------+
       |Interface   | Attribute	    | Value   |
       +------------+---------------+---------+
       |fmemopen(), | Thread safety | MT-Safe |
       +------------+---------------+---------+

CONFORMING TO
       POSIX.1-2008.  This function is not specified in POSIX.1-2001,  and  is
       not widely available on other systems.

       POSIX.1-2008  specifies	that  'b'  in mode shall be ignored.  However,
       Technical Corrigendum 1 adjusts the standard to	allow  implementation-
       specific	 treatment  for this case, thus permitting the glibc treatment
       of 'b'.

NOTES
       There is no file descriptor associated with the file stream returned by
       this  function  (i.e.,  fileno(3) will return an error if called on the
       returned stream).

       With version 2.22, binary mode (see below) was removed, many longstand-
       ing bugs in the implementation of fmemopen() were fixed, and a new ver-
       sioned symbol was created for this interface.

   Binary mode
       From version 2.9 to 2.21, the glibc implementation of  fmemopen()  sup-
       ported  a  "binary"  mode,  enabled by specifying the letter 'b' as the
       second character in mode.  In this mode, writes don't implicitly add  a
       terminating  null byte, and fseek(3) SEEK_END is relative to the end of
       the buffer (i.e., the value specified by	 the  size  argument),	rather
       than the current string length.

       An  API	bug  afflicted	the  implementation of binary mode: to specify
       binary mode, the 'b' must be the second character in mode.   Thus,  for
       example,	 "wb+"	has  the  desired effect, but "w+b" does not.  This is
       inconsistent with the treatment of mode by fopen(3).

       Binary mode was removed in glibc 2.22; a 'b' specified in mode  has  no
       effect.

BUGS
       In  versions of glibc before 2.22, if size is specified as zero, fmemo-
       pen() fails with the error EINVAL.  It would be more consistent if this
       case  successfully  created  a stream that then returned end-of-file on
       the first attempt at reading; since version 2.22, the glibc implementa-
       tion provides that behavior.

       In  versions of glibc before 2.22, specifying append mode ("a" or "a+")
       for fmemopen() sets the initial buffer position to the first null byte,
       but  (if the current position is reset to a location other than the end
       of the stream) does not force subsequent writes to append at the end of
       the stream.  This bug is fixed in glibc 2.22.

       In  versions  of	 glibc before 2.22, if the mode argument to fmemopen()
       specifies append ("a" or "a+"), and the size argument does not cover  a
       null  byte  in buf, then, according to POSIX.1-2008, the initial buffer
       position should be set to the next byte after the end  of  the  buffer.
       However,	 in this case the glibc fmemopen() sets the buffer position to
       -1.  This bug is fixed in glibc 2.22.

       In versions of glibc before 2.22, when a call to fseek(3) with a whence
       value  of SEEK_END was performed on a stream created by fmemopen(), the
       offset was subtracted from the end-of-stream position, instead of being
       added.  This bug is fixed in glibc 2.22.

       The glibc 2.9 addition of "binary" mode for fmemopen() silently changed
       the ABI: previously, fmemopen() ignored 'b' in mode.

EXAMPLE
       The program  below  uses	 fmemopen()  to	 open  an  input  buffer,  and
       open_memstream(3)  to open a dynamically sized output buffer.  The pro-
       gram scans its input string (taken from the  program's  first  command-
       line  argument) reading integers, and writes the squares of these inte-
       gers to the output buffer.  An example of the output produced  by  this
       program is the following:

	   $ ./a.out '1 23 43'
	   size=11; ptr=1 529 1849

   Program source

       #define _GNU_SOURCE
       #include <string.h>
       #include <stdio.h>
       #include <stdlib.h>

       #define handle_error(msg) \
	   do { perror(msg); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } while (0)

       int
       main(int argc, char *argv[])
       {
	   FILE *out, *in;
	   int v, s;
	   size_t size;
	   char *ptr;

	   if (argc != 2) {
	       fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s '<num>...'\n", argv[0]);
	       exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
	   }

	   in = fmemopen(argv[1], strlen(argv[1]), "r");
	   if (in == NULL)
	       handle_error("fmemopen");

	   out = open_memstream(&ptr, &size);
	   if (out == NULL)
	       handle_error("open_memstream");

	   for (;;) {
	       s = fscanf(in, "%d", &v);
	       if (s <= 0)
		   break;

	       s = fprintf(out, "%d ", v * v);
	       if (s == -1)
		   handle_error("fprintf");
	   }

	   fclose(in);
	   fclose(out);

	   printf("size=%zu; ptr=%s\n", size, ptr);

	   free(ptr);
	   exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
       }

SEE ALSO
       fopen(3), fopencookie(3), open_memstream(3)

COLOPHON
       This  page  is  part of release 4.10 of the Linux 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/.



GNU				  2016-10-08			   FMEMOPEN(3)