tmpnam (3)
Leading comments
Copyright (c) 1999 Andries Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl) %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM) Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Since the L...
NAME
tmpnam, tmpnam_r - create a name for a temporary fileSYNOPSIS
#include <stdio.h> char *tmpnam(char *s);
DESCRIPTION
Note: Avoid use of tmpnam(); use mkstemp(3) or tmpfile(3) instead.The tmpnam() function returns a pointer to a string that is a valid filename, and such that a file with this name did not exist at some point in time, so that naive programmers may think it a suitable name for a temporary file. If the argument s is NULL, this name is generated in an internal static buffer and may be overwritten by the next call to tmpnam(). If s is not NULL, the name is copied to the character array (of length at least L_tmpnam) pointed to by s and the value s is returned in case of success.
The pathname that is created, has a directory prefix P_tmpdir. (Both L_tmpnam and P_tmpdir are defined in <stdio.h>, just like the TMP_MAX mentioned below.)
RETURN VALUE
The tmpnam() function returns a pointer to a unique temporary filename, or NULL if a unique name cannot be generated.ERRORS
No errors are defined.ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).| Interface | Attribute | Value |
| tmpnam() | Thread safety | MT-Unsafe race:tmpnam/!s |
| tmpnam_r() | Thread safety | MT-Safe |
CONFORMING TO
SVr4, 4.3BSD, C89, C99, POSIX.1-2001. POSIX.1-2008 marks tmpnam() as obsolete.NOTES
The tmpnam() function generates a different string each time it is called, up to TMP_MAX times. If it is called more than TMP_MAX times, the behavior is implementation defined.Although tmpnam() generates names that are difficult to guess, it is nevertheless possible that between the time that tmpnam() returns a pathname, and the time that the program opens it, another program might create that pathname using open(2), or create it as a symbolic link. This can lead to security holes. To avoid such possibilities, use the open(2) O_EXCL flag to open the pathname. Or better yet, use mkstemp(3) or tmpfile(3).
Portable applications that use threads cannot call tmpnam() with a NULL argument if either _POSIX_THREADS or _POSIX_THREAD_SAFE_FUNCTIONS is defined.
A POSIX draft proposed to use a function tmpnam_r() defined by
char *
tmpnam_r(char *s)
{
return s ? tmpnam(s) : NULL;
}
apparently as a warning not to use NULL. A few systems implement it. To get a glibc prototype for this function from <stdio.h>, define _SVID_SOURCE or _BSD_SOURCE (before including any header file).