IBDEV(3)

💖 NAME 💖

ibdev — open a device (device) ✨ like, it gets you a whole device, bestie

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

#include <gpib/ib.h>

int ibdev(int board_index, int pad, int sad, int timeout, int send_eoi,
          int eos);

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so picture this: you want to talk to a device, right? but first you need a device descriptor — like a little backstage pass 🎟️ — and that's literally what ibdev() hands you. Once you have it, every other function in the library can use it. It's giving main character energy fr.

Now let's break down the arguments, because there's six of them and they all matter:

• board_index — tells the library which GPIB interface board your device is plugged into. Which board, bestie. Not which device. The board. 🫶
• pad — the primary GPIB address of the device you're opening (go look at ibpad() for the deets).
• sad — the secondary GPIB address of that same device (that's a ibsad() situation, iykyk).
• timeout — how long io operations get to cook before they're done 💀 see ibtmo() for the whole story.
• send_eoi — if this is nonzero, the EOI line gets asserted along with the last byte sent during writes. If it's zero, it doesn't. That's the ibeot() vibe, go read it.
• eos — this one sets the end-of-string character, and also whether receiving that character should terminate reads. Yeah, it's a two-for-one. ibeos() has the details ✨

and one last lil thing: ibdev() can be kinda chatty and print error messages to stderr 😭 — if you want it to shut up about that, set the environment variable IB_NO_ERROR before you call the routine. That's it. That's the hack. 🌸

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👑 RETURN VALUE 👑

• if it ate and left no crumbs: you get a non-negative device descriptor back 💅 use it, love it, pass it around
• if it flopped: -1. Sad. 🙈

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🌈 COPYRIGHT 🌈

Copyright © 2003-2006, 2008 Frank Mori Hess

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okay bestie that's the whole page, mwah 💜 this was linux-gpib version 4.3.7, dated 07/06/2026, and yes we were in section IBDEV(3) the entire time 🎀✨