NAME
perror —
write error messages to standard
error
SYNOPSIS
#include
<stdio.h>
void
perror(const
char *string);
DESCRIPTION
The
perror()
function looks up the error message string affiliated with an error number
and writes it, followed by a new-line, to the standard error stream.
If the argument string is not the
NULL pointer and is not zero length, it is prepended
to the message string and separated from it by a colon and a space
(‘: ’). Otherwise, only the
error message string is printed.
The contents of the error message string are the
same as those returned by
strerror()
with argument errno.
SEE ALSO
STANDARDS
The perror() function conforms to
ANSI X3.159-1989
(“ANSI C89”).
HISTORY
The perror() function first appeared in
Version 4 AT&T UNIX.
CAVEATS
On systems other than OpenBSD, the
LC_MESSAGES
locale(1)
category can cause different strings to be printed instead of the normal
error messages; see CAVEATS in
setlocale(3) for details.