PROPERTIES(3)

💖 PROPERTIES(3) 💖

Okay so this is the PROPERTIES(3) manual page bestie, and it's literally all about the property list functions from the System Utilities Library — you know, libutil, link it with -lutil 🫶. These functions are here to let you create simple property lists from ASCII file data, and honestly? It's giving useful. 💅

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✨ LIBRARY ✨

So this whole situation lives in the System Utilities Library — that's libutil, and you link against it with -lutil. Periodt. 🎀

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

Here's the whole vibe in code form, keep it exact bestie:

#include <libutil.h>

properties
properties_read(int fd);

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

void
properties_free(properties list);

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

First up, the struct — this is the whole personality of the thing:

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

Now let me walk you through the functions because they're literally so straightforward:

• properties_read(int fd) — so this one reads name = value pairs from the file descriptor you pass in fd, and it returns the head of a brand new property list. Assuming everything parsed properly, of course. If something goes wrong? You get NULL back. No cap. 😭
• property_find(properties list, const char *name) — this one's the lookup bestie. Give it the property list and a name, and it returns the associated value string if it finds it. If not? NULL. And heads up — the value you get back may be up to PROPERTY_MAX_VALUE bytes in length, so don't get caught lacking. 🔥
• properties_free(properties list) — when you're done with the structure that properties_read() returned, this is the one that frees it. Clean up after yourself, queen. 💜

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🌈 FILE FORMAT 🌈

Okay so the tea on how files should be formatted: 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. Simple enough, right? 💖

But wait — if you want newlines inside your value? You gotta enclose the entire value in { } (curly-bracket) characters. That's the trick. 🦋

And any line beginning with a # or ; character is assumed to be a comment and will be ignored. Iconic. ✨

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

This masterpiece was written by Jordan Hubbard. We stan. 🫶

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💀 BUGS 💀

Okay so the bug section is literally just one word: Simplistic. That's it. That's the whole bug report. I'm not even kidding. 💀

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That's the whole page bestie! This came from the Debian version, dated October 7, 1998 — like, a literal relic from the 90s and we're still using it. Vintage icon behavior. 🎀 Stay slaying with those property lists! 💅