inotify_init (2)

#include <sys/inotify.h>

int inotify_init(void);
int inotify_init1(int flags);

For an overview of the inotify API, see inotify(7).

inotify_init() initializes a new inotify instance and returns a file descriptor associated with a new inotify event queue.

If flags is 0, then inotify_init1() is the same as inotify_init(). The following values can be bitwise ORed in flags to obtain different behavior:

IN_NONBLOCK

Set the O_NONBLOCK file status flag on the new open file description. Using this flag saves extra calls to fcntl(2) to achieve the same result.

IN_CLOEXEC

Set the close-on-exec (FD_CLOEXEC) flag on the new file descriptor. See the description of the O_CLOEXEC flag in open(2) for reasons why this may be useful.

On success, these system calls return a new file descriptor. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set to indicate the error.

EINVAL

(inotify_init1()) An invalid value was specified in flags.

EMFILE

The user limit on the total number of inotify instances has been reached.

ENFILE

The system limit on the total number of file descriptors has been reached.

ENOMEM

Insufficient kernel memory is available.

inotify_init() first appeared in Linux 2.6.13; library support was added to glibc in version 2.4. inotify_init1() was added in Linux 2.6.27; library support was added to glibc in version 2.9.

These system calls are Linux-specific.

inotify_add_watch(2), inotify_rm_watch(2), inotify(7)

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