setprogname(3bsd)

setprogname3bsd

Get and set program name

Part of getprogname(3bsd).

Usage

#include <stdlib.h>

(See libbsd(7) for include usage.)

const char *

getprogname(void);

void

setprogname(const char *progname);

Library

library “libbsd”

Overview

The getprogname() returns a string with the current program name, excluding any directory component. The function will return NULL if it was unable to get the program name from any known source.

The setprogname() function sets the current program name, stripping any directory component prefix. The function will keep a reference to the passed string pointer, so it must not be freed or modified while these functions might be called.

The implementations on most BSDs will try to initialize the program name at program startup time, and libbsd will try to infer it from various known sources depending on the target system. But it is not a portable assumption that the program name will be set without calling setprogname(), so portable programs should always call it after starting up.

Releases

5 releases since Debian 10 (Buster); the text changed 2 times.

  1. 10
  2. 11
  3. 12–Arch

History

The setprogname() and getprogname() functions first appeared in NetBSD 1.6, FreeBSD 4.4, DragonFly 2.1 and OpenBSD 5.4.

From libbsd 0.12.2-2 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.