STRTONUM(3) BSD Library Functions Manual STRTONUM(3)NAMEstrtonum — reliably convert string value to an integer
LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <stdlib.h>
long long
strtonum(const char *nptr, long long minval, long long maxval,
const char **errstr);
DESCRIPTION
The strtonum() function converts the string in nptr to a long long value.
The strtonum() function was designed to facilitate safe, robust program‐
ming and overcome the shortcomings of the atoi(3) and strtol(3) family of
interfaces.
The string may begin with an arbitrary amount of whitespace (as deter‐
mined by isspace(3)) followed by a single optional ‘+’ or ‘-’ sign.
The remainder of the string is converted to a long long value according
to base 10.
The value obtained is then checked against the provided minval and maxval
bounds. If errstr is non-null, strtonum() stores an error string in
*errstr indicating the failure.
RETURN VALUES
The strtonum() function returns the result of the conversion, unless the
value would exceed the provided bounds or is invalid. On error, 0 is
returned, errno is set, and errstr will point to an error message.
*errstr will be set to NULL on success; this fact can be used to differ‐
entiate a successful return of 0 from an error.
EXAMPLES
Using strtonum() correctly is meant to be simpler than the alternative
functions.
int iterations;
const char *errstr;
iterations = strtonum(optarg, 1, 64, &errstr);
if (errstr)
errx(1, "number of iterations is %s: %s", errstr, optarg);
The above example will guarantee that the value of iterations is between
1 and 64 (inclusive).
ERRORS
[ERANGE] The given string was out of range.
[EINVAL] The given string did not consist solely of digit char‐
acters.
[EINVAL] minval was larger than maxval.
If an error occurs, errstr will be set to one of the following strings:
too large The result was larger than the provided maximum value.
too small The result was smaller than the provided minimum value.
invalid The string did not consist solely of digit characters.
SEE ALSOatof(3), atoi(3), atol(3), atoll(3), sscanf(3), strtod(3), strtol(3),
strtoul(3)STANDARDSstrtonum() was originally implemented as an extension on OpenBSD. The
existing alternatives, such as atoi(3) and strtol(3) are either impossi‐
ble or difficult to use safely.
BSD April 29, 2004 BSD
