NAME

properties_read, property_find, properties_free — functions to allow creating simple property lists from ASCII file data

LIBRARY

System Utilities Library (libutil, -lutil)

SYNOPSIS

#include < libutil.h>

properties
properties_read( int fd);

char *
property_find( properties list, const char *name);

void
properties_free( properties list);

DESCRIPTION

typedef struct _properties { 
 struct _properties *next; 
 char *name; 
 char *value; 
} *properties;

The function properties_read() reads name = value pairs from the file descriptor passed in fd and returns the head of a new property list, assuming that the file's contents have been parsed properly, or NULL in case of error.

The property_find() function returns the associated value string for the property named name if found, otherwise NULL. The value returned may be up to PROPERTY_MAX_VALUE bytes in length.

The properties_free() function is used to free the structure returned by properties_read() when it is no longer needed.

FILE FORMAT

Each property in the file is assumed to have the format of name = value where name is an alphanumeric string (and any punctuation not including the `=' character) and value is an arbitrary string of text terminated by a newline character. If newlines are desired, the entire value should be enclosed in { } (curly-bracket) characters. Any line beginning with a # or ; character is assumed to be a comment and will be ignored.

AUTHORS

Jordan Hubbard

BUGS

Simplistic.