NAME

LIBRARY

SYNOPSIS

int
access(const char *path, int mode);

int
eaccess(const char *path, int mode);

int
faccessat(int fd, const char *path, int mode, int flag);

DESCRIPTION

For additional information, see the File Access Permission section of intro(2).

The eaccess() system call uses the effective user ID and the group access list to authorize the request; the access() system call uses the real user ID in place of the effective user ID, the real group ID in place of the effective group ID, and the rest of the group access list.

The faccessat() system call is equivalent to access() except in the case where path specifies a relative path. In this case the file whose accessibility is to be determined is located relative to the directory associated with the file descriptor fd instead of the current working directory. If faccessat() is passed the special value AT_FDCWD in the fd parameter, the current working directory is used and the behavior is identical to a call to access(). Values for flag are constructed by a bitwise-inclusive OR of flags from the following list, defined in <fcntl.h>:

AT_EACCESS

The checks for accessibility are performed using the effective user and group IDs instead of the real user and group ID as required in a call to access().

AT_RESOLVE_BENEATH

Only walk paths below the directory specified by the fd descriptor. See the description of the O_RESOLVE_BENEATH flag in the open(2) manual page.

AT_EMPTY_PATH

If the path argument is an empty string, operate on the file or directory referenced by the descriptor fd. If fd is equal to AT_FDCWD, operate on the current working directory.

Even if a process's real or effective user has appropriate privileges and indicates success for X_OK, the file may not actually have execute permission bits set. Likewise for R_OK and W_OK.

RETURN VALUES

ERRORS

[EINVAL]

The value of the mode argument is invalid.

[ENOTDIR]

A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

[ENAMETOOLONG]

A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.

[ENOENT]

The named file does not exist.

[ELOOP]

Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.

[EROFS]

Write access is requested for a file on a read-only file system.

[ETXTBSY]

Write access is requested for a pure procedure (shared text) file presently being executed.

[EACCES]

Permission bits of the file mode do not permit the requested access, or search permission is denied on a component of the path prefix.

[EFAULT]

The path argument points outside the process's allocated address space.

[EIO]

An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.

[EINTEGRITY]

Corrupted data was detected while reading from the file system.

Also, the faccessat() system call may fail if:

[EBADF]

The path argument does not specify an absolute path and the fd argument is neither AT_FDCWD nor a valid file descriptor.

[EINVAL]

The value of the flag argument is not valid.

[ENOTDIR]

The path argument is not an absolute path and fd is neither AT_FDCWD nor a file descriptor associated with a directory.

[ENOTCAPABLE]

path is an absolute path, or contained a ".." component leading to a directory outside of the directory hierarchy specified by fd, and the process is in capability mode.

SEE ALSO

STANDARDS

HISTORY

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS

access() remains useful for providing clues to users as to whether operations make sense for particular filesystem objects (e.g. 'delete' menu item only highlighted in a writable folder ... avoiding interpretation of the st_mode bits that the application might not understand -- e.g. in the case of AFS). It also allows a cheaper file existence test than stat(2).