envz_get3
Environment string support
Part of envz_add(3).
Library
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
Overview
These functions are glibc-specific.
An argz vector is a pointer to a character buffer together with a length, see argz_add(3). An envz vector is a special argz vector, namely one where the strings have the form "name=value". Everything after the first '=' is considered to be the value. If there is no '=', the value is taken to be NULL. (While the value in case of a trailing '=' is the empty string "".)
These functions are for handling envz vectors.
envz_add() adds the string "name=value" (in case value is non-NULL) or "name" (in case value is NULL) to the envz vector (*envz, *envz_len) and updates *envz and *envz_len. If an entry with the same name existed, it is removed.
envz_entry() looks for name in the envz vector (envz, envz_len) and returns the entry if found, or NULL if not.
envz_get() looks for name in the envz vector (envz, envz_len) and returns the value if found, or NULL if not. (Note that the value can also be NULL, namely when there is an entry for name without '=' sign.)
envz_merge() adds each entry in envz2 to *envz, as if with envz_add(). If override is true, then values in envz2 will supersede those with the same name in *envz, otherwise not.
envz_remove() removes the entry for name from (*envz, *envz_len) if there was one.
envz_strip() removes all entries with value NULL.
Return value
All envz functions that do memory allocation have a return type of error_t (an integer type), and return 0 for success, and ENOMEM if an allocation error occurs.
Attributes
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
| Interface | Attribute | Value |
| envz_add(), envz_entry(), envz_get(), envz_merge(), envz_remove(), envz_strip() | Thread safety | MT-Safe |
Examples
#include <envz.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int
main(int argc, char *argv[], char *envp[])
{
char *str;
size_t e_len = 0;
for (size_t i = 0; envp[i] != NULL; i++)
e_len += strlen(envp[i]) + 1;
str = envz_entry(*envp, e_len, "HOME");
printf("%s\n", str);
str = envz_get(*envp, e_len, "HOME");
printf("%s\n", str);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
History
- Arch Linux 2026-11-01: the text shown here
- Debian 13 (Trixie)
- Debian 12 (Bookworm)
- Debian 11 (Bullseye)
- Debian 10 (Buster)
- Debian 9 (Stretch)
- Debian 8 (Jessie)
- Debian 7 (Wheezy)
- Debian 6.0 (Squeeze)
- Debian 5.0 (Lenny)
- Debian 4.0 (Etch)
- Debian 3.1 (Sarge)