TRUNCATE

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (2)
Updated: 24 July 1993
Index Return to Main Contents
 

NAME

truncate, ftruncate - truncate a file to a specified length  

SYNOPSIS

#include <unistd.h>

int truncate(const char *path, size_t length);
int ftruncate(int fd, size_t length);  

DESCRIPTION

Truncate causes the file named by path or referenced by fd to be truncated to at most length bytes in size. If the file previously was larger than this size, the extra data is lost. With ftruncate, the file must be open for writing.  

RETURN VALUE

On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.  

ERRORS

For truncate:
ENOTDIR
A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
EINVAL
The pathname contains a character with the high-order bit set.
ENAMETOOLONG
A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.
ENOENT
The named file does not exist.
EACCES
Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.
EACCES
The named file is not writable by the user.
ELOOP
Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
EISDIR
The named file is a directory.
EROFS
The named file resides on a read-only file system.
ETXTBSY
The file is a pure procedure (shared text) file that is being executed.
EIO
An I/O error occurred updating the inode.
EFAULT
Path points outside the process's allocated address space.

For Ftruncate:

EBADF
The fd is not a valid descriptor.
EINVAL
The fd references a socket, not a file.
EINVAL
The fd is not open for writing.
 

HISTORY

These function calls appeared in BSD 4.2.  

BUGS

These calls should be generalized to allow ranges of bytes in a file to be discarded.  

SEE ALSO

open(2)


 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
RETURN VALUE
ERRORS
HISTORY
BUGS
SEE ALSO

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