STRTONUM(3) BSD Programmer's Manual STRTONUM(3)NAMEstrtonum - reliably convert string value to an integer
SYNOPSIS
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <limits.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. On MirOS, if the value is prefixed by '0' or '0x', conversion
is done according to base 8 or 16, respectively. This is a change in the
underlying library and only visible to the user, not to the programme us-
ing strtonum().
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 re-
turned and errstr will point to an error message. *errstr will be set to
NULL on success; this fact can be used to differentiate a successful re-
turn 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.
ERRORS
[ERANGE] The given string was out of range.
[EINVAL] The given string did not consist solely of digit charac-
ters.
[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() is an OpenBSD extension. The existing alternatives, such as
atoi(3) and strtol(3), are either impossible or difficult to use safely.
HISTORY
The strtonum() function first appeared in OpenBSD 3.6.
MirOS BSD #10-current April 29, 2004 1
