.\" $NetBSD: truncate.2,v 1.31 2017/05/14 12:30:37 wiz Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1983, 1991, 1993 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)truncate.2 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93 .\" .Dd July 23, 2014 .Dt TRUNCATE 2 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm truncate , .Nm ftruncate .Nd truncate a file to a specified length .Sh LIBRARY .Lb libc .Sh SYNOPSIS .In unistd.h .Ft int .Fn truncate "const char *path" "off_t length" .Ft int .Fn ftruncate "int fd" "off_t length" .Sh DESCRIPTION .Fn truncate causes the file named by .Fa path or referenced by .Fa fd to have a size of .Fa length bytes. If the file previously was larger than this size, the extra data is discarded. If it was previously shorter than .Fa length , its size is increased to the specified value and the extended area appears as if it were zero-filled. .Pp With .Fn ftruncate , the file must be open for writing; for .Fn truncate , the process must have write permissions for the file. .Sh RETURN VALUES A value of 0 is returned if the call succeeds. If the call fails a \-1 is returned, and the global variable .Va errno specifies the error. .Sh ERRORS Error return codes common to .Fn truncate and .Fn ftruncate are: .Bl -tag -width Er .It Bq Er EINVAL The .Fa length argument was less than 0. .It Bq Er EIO An I/O error occurred updating the inode. .It Bq Er EISDIR The named file is a directory. .It Bq Er ENOSPC There was no space in the file system to complete the operation. .It Bq Er EROFS The named file resides on a read-only file system. .It Bq Er ETXTBSY The file is a pure procedure (shared text) file that is being executed. .El .Pp Error codes specific to .Fn truncate are: .Bl -tag -width Er .It Bq Er EACCES Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix, or the named file is not writable by the user. .It Bq Er EFAULT .Fa path points outside the process's allocated address space. .It Bq Er ELOOP Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. .It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG A component of a pathname exceeded .Brq Dv NAME_MAX characters, or an entire path name exceeded .Brq Dv PATH_MAX characters. .It Bq Er ENOENT The named file does not exist. .It Bq Er ENOTDIR A component of the path prefix is not a directory. .El .Pp Error codes specific to .Fn ftruncate are: .Bl -tag -width Er .It Bq Er EBADF The .Fa fd is not a valid descriptor. .It Bq Er EINVAL The .Fa fd references a socket, not a file, or the .Fa fd is not open for writing. .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr fdiscard 2 , .Xr open 2 .Sh STANDARDS Use of .Fn truncate to extend a file is an .St -p1003.1-2004 extension, and is thus not portable. Files can be extended in a portable way seeking (using .Xr lseek 2 ) to the required size and writing a single character with .Xr write 2 . .Sh HISTORY The .Fn truncate and .Fn ftruncate function calls appeared in .Bx 4.2 .