xref: /freebsd/lib/libc/gen/wordexp.3 (revision f0a75d274af375d15b97b830966b99a02b7db911)
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26.\" $FreeBSD$
27.\"
28.Dd July 29, 2004
29.Dt WORDEXP 3
30.Os
31.Sh NAME
32.Nm wordexp
33.Nd "perform shell-style word expansions"
34.Sh LIBRARY
35.Lb libc
36.Sh SYNOPSIS
37.In wordexp.h
38.Ft int
39.Fn wordexp "const char * restrict words" "wordexp_t * restrict we" "int flags"
40.Ft void
41.Fn wordfree "wordexp_t *we"
42.Sh DESCRIPTION
43The
44.Fn wordexp
45function performs shell-style word expansion on
46.Fa words
47and places the list of words into the
48.Va we_wordv
49member of
50.Fa we ,
51and the number of words into
52.Va we_wordc .
53.Pp
54The
55.Fa flags
56argument is the bitwise inclusive OR of any of the following constants:
57.Bl -tag -width ".Dv WRDE_SHOWERR"
58.It Dv WRDE_APPEND
59Append the words to those generated by a previous call to
60.Fn wordexp .
61.It Dv WRDE_DOOFFS
62As many
63.Dv NULL
64pointers as are specified by the
65.Va we_offs
66member of
67.Fa we
68are added to the front of
69.Va we_wordv .
70.It Dv WRDE_NOCMD
71Disallow command substitution in
72.Fa words .
73See the note in
74.Sx BUGS
75before using this.
76.It Dv WRDE_REUSE
77The
78.Fa we
79argument was passed to a previous successful call to
80.Fn wordexp
81but has not been passed to
82.Fn wordfree .
83The implementation may reuse the space allocated to it.
84.It Dv WRDE_SHOWERR
85Do not redirect shell error messages to
86.Pa /dev/null .
87.It Dv WRDE_UNDEF
88Report error on an attempt to expand an undefined shell variable.
89.El
90.Pp
91The
92.Vt wordexp_t
93structure is defined in
94.In wordexp.h
95as:
96.Bd -literal -offset indent
97typedef struct {
98	size_t	we_wordc;	/* count of words matched */
99	char	**we_wordv;	/* pointer to list of words */
100	size_t	we_offs;	/* slots to reserve in we_wordv */
101} wordexp_t;
102.Ed
103.Pp
104The
105.Fn wordfree
106function frees the memory allocated by
107.Fn wordexp .
108.Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
109The
110.Fn wordexp
111function is implemented as a wrapper around the undocumented
112.Ic wordexp
113shell built-in command.
114.Sh RETURN VALUES
115The
116.Fn wordexp
117function returns zero if successful, otherwise it returns one of the following
118error codes:
119.Bl -tag -width ".Dv WRDE_NOSPACE"
120.It Dv WRDE_BADCHAR
121The
122.Fa words
123argument contains one of the following unquoted characters:
124.Aq newline ,
125.Ql | ,
126.Ql & ,
127.Ql \&; ,
128.Ql < ,
129.Ql > ,
130.Ql \&( ,
131.Ql \&) ,
132.Ql { ,
133.Ql } .
134.It Dv WRDE_BADVAL
135An attempt was made to expand an undefined shell variable and
136.Dv WRDE_UNDEF
137is set in
138.Fa flags .
139.It Dv WRDE_CMDSUB
140An attempt was made to use command substitution and
141.Dv WRDE_NOCMD
142is set in
143.Fa flags .
144.It Dv WRDE_NOSPACE
145Not enough memory to store the result.
146.It Dv WRDE_SYNTAX
147Shell syntax error in
148.Fa words .
149.El
150.Pp
151The
152.Fn wordfree
153function returns no value.
154.Sh ENVIRONMENT
155.Bl -tag -width ".Ev IFS"
156.It Ev IFS
157Field separator.
158.El
159.Sh EXAMPLES
160Invoke the editor on all
161.Pa .c
162files in the current directory
163and
164.Pa /etc/motd
165(error checking omitted):
166.Bd -literal -offset indent
167wordexp_t we;
168
169wordexp("${EDITOR:-vi} *.c /etc/motd", &we, 0);
170execvp(we.we_wordv[0], we.we_wordv);
171.Ed
172.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
173Diagnostic messages from the shell are written to the standard error output
174if
175.Dv WRDE_SHOWERR
176is set in
177.Fa flags .
178.Sh SEE ALSO
179.Xr sh 1 ,
180.Xr fnmatch 3 ,
181.Xr glob 3 ,
182.Xr popen 3 ,
183.Xr system 3
184.Sh STANDARDS
185The
186.Fn wordexp
187and
188.Fn wordfree
189functions conform to
190.St -p1003.1-2001 .
191.Sh BUGS
192Do not pass untrusted user data to
193.Fn wordexp ,
194regardless of whether the
195.Dv WRDE_NOCMD
196flag is set.
197The
198.Fn wordexp
199function attempts to detect input that would cause commands to be
200executed before passing it to the shell
201but it does not use the same parser so it may be fooled.
202.Pp
203The current
204.Fn wordexp
205implementation does not recognize multibyte characters, since the
206shell (which it invokes to perform expansions) does not.
207