ARCHIVE_READ_FREE(3)

💖 ARCHIVE_READ_FREE(3) 💖

okay bestie, so this is a page from the Library Functions Manual, and the whole vibe is: how to properly say bye-bye to a streaming archive you've been reading 👋✨

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📚 LIBRARY

Streaming Archive Library (libarchive, -larchive) 🫶

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

#include <archive.h>

int
archive_read_close(struct archive *);

int
archive_read_finish(struct archive *);

int
archive_read_free(struct archive *);

three little functions, one big cleanup era 💅

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

• archive_read_close() — wraps up the archive and calls the close callback. it's giving graceful exit ✨
• archive_read_finish() — bestie this one is a deprecated synonym for archive_read_free(). the new name showed up with libarchive 3.0. so if your app needs to compile against either libarchive 2 or libarchive 3, you should keep using the archive_read_finish() name. both names are supported until libarchive 4.0 drops — and that's not expected to happen any earlier than 2013. so like. we're fine 😌
• archive_read_free() — if you didn't already call archive_read_close() yourself, this one calls it for you, and then releases all the resources. 👑

🚨 note, and this one's important: in libarchive 1.x this function was declared to return void, which made it literally impossible to detect certain errors when archive_read_close() got invoked implicitly from inside this function. the declaration was corrected starting with libarchive 2.0. glow-up fr fr 🦋

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🎀 RETURN VALUES 🎀

These functions return ARCHIVE_OK on success, or ARCHIVE_FATAL. that's it. no in-between, no situationship 😭

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💀 ERRORS 💀

want the deets? detailed error codes and textual descriptions are available from the archive_errno() and archive_error_string() functions. iykyk 🔥

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• archive_read_data(3)
• archive_read_filter(3)
• archive_read_format(3)
• archive_read_new(3)
• archive_read_open(3)
• archive_read_set_options(3)
• archive_util(3)
• libarchive(3)

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Debian — February 2, 2012 🎂

and that's the whole page bestie, mwah, go free your archives responsibly 💖🫶✨