errnoname is a C library that lets us get the symbolic name for each errno integer value.

Usage

API

The library has a single function:

char const * errnoname(int)

Pass an errno value in, get back a pointer to a null-terminated string containing the name.

If the errno value does not match a known name, a null pointer is returned. (This intentionally includes errno value 0.)

This function is always thread-safe and reentrant.

This function never sets errno.

Example

Here is a "hello world" with error handling:

#include <errno.h> /* errno */
#include <stdio.h> /* EOF, fflush, fprintf, fputs, stderr, stdout */
#include <stdlib.h> /* EXIT_FAILURE, EXIT_SUCCESS */

#include "errnoname.h" /* errnoname */

int main(int argc, char * * argv)
{
    char const * error_name;

    /* `fputs` and `fflush` return `EOF` for all errors: */
    if(fputs("Hello world\n", stdout) != EOF
    && fflush(stdout) != EOF)
    {
        return EXIT_SUCCESS;   
    }

    /* since `fputs` or `fflush` failed, `errno` should be */
    /* the error from the underlying `write` on most systems: */
    error_name = errnoname(errno);

    /* check if null, which means this `errno` value is unknown: */
    if(!error_name)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "unknown error number: %d\n", errno);
    }
    else
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "error: %s\n", error_name);
    }
    return EXIT_FAILURE;
}

C Name Collisions

The errnoname.h header will only ever define identifiers whose first nine characters are errnoname or ERRNONAME.

So names like errno_name, errnoName, ErrnoName, or ERRNO_NAME will always remain available for you to use.

Building

Just compile and link errnoname.c as normal.

errnoname.c also has an include guard, so you can use it instead of errnoname.h as a header-only library.

Optimization

If errnoname.c is compiled with the ERRNONAME_SAFE_TO_USE_ARRAY preprocessor macro defined, it will use an array of errno names indexed by errno values instead of a switch statement. Your compiler must support designated initializers for this to work.

Note that modern compilers can already automatically convert the switch to an array lookup when optimizations are turned up high enough if it is safe and more efficient to do so.

Contributing

The best way to help this library is making sure that we have the best coverage of errno names possible:

• Check if the for-maintainers/gather-errno-names.sh script has the most complete and up-to-date sources of information for errno names - maybe you know a better way to get the latest ones for some system, and maybe we are missing a source we should include.

• Check if the for-maintainers/errno-list.txt file is missing any errno names that you know about.

• Check if the for-maintainers/generate-c.sh script file handles all errno names that alias the same errno value on any system.

You can also help by sharing your use-cases, what features you want, and design suggestions - the errnoname function is a good minimal foundation, but there might be other features or performance optimizations worth doing.