posix_spawnattr_init(3)

posix_spawnattr_init3

Initialize and destroy spawn attributes object

Usage

#include <spawn.h>

int

posix_spawnattr_init(posix_spawnattr_t * attr);

int

posix_spawnattr_destroy(posix_spawnattr_t * attr);

Library

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

Overview

The posix_spawnattr_init() function initializes a spawn attributes object attr with the default value for all of the individual attributes used by the implementation. Initializing an already initialized spawn attributes object may cause memory to be leaked.

The posix_spawnattr_destroy() function destroys a spawn attributes object. A destroyed attr attributes object can be reinitialized using posix_spawnattr_init(). The object should not be used after it has been destroyed.

A spawn attributes object is of type posix_spawnattr_t (defined in ⟨spawn.h⟩) and is used to specify the inheritance of process attributes across a spawn operation.

The resulting spawn attributes object (possibly modified by setting individual attribute values), is used to modify the behavior of posix_spawn() or posix_spawnp(). After a spawn attributes object has been used to spawn a process by a call to a posix_spawn() or posix_spawnp(), any function affecting the attributes object (including destruction) will not affect any process that has been spawned in this way.

Return values

Upon successful completion, posix_spawnattr_init() and posix_spawnattr_destroy() return zero; otherwise, an error number is returned to indicate the error.

Errors

The posix_spawnattr_init() function will fail if:

[ENOMEM]

Insufficient memory exists to initialize the spawn attributes object.

Releases

39 releases since FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE; the text changed 25 times.

  1. 8.0
  2. 8.1
  3. 8.2
  4. 8.3
  5. 8.4
  6. 9.0
  7. 9.1
  8. 9.2
  9. 9.3
  10. 10.0
  11. 10.1
  12. 10.2
  13. 10.3
  14. 10.4
  15. 11.0
  16. 11.1
  17. 11.2
  18. 11.3
  19. 11.4
  20. 12.0
  21. 12.1
  22. 12.2
  23. 12.3
  24. 12.4
  25. 13.0–13.2
  26. 13.3–16.0

Standards

The posix_spawnattr_init() and posix_spawnattr_destroy() functions conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”).

History

The posix_spawnattr_init() and posix_spawnattr_destroy() functions first appeared in FreeBSD 8.0.

Authors

Ed Schouten ⟨[email protected]⟩

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.