ECPKPARAMETERS_PRINT(3ossl)

📦 version 3.5.0, in opensuse-leap 16.0

💖 ECPKPARAMETERS_PRINT(3ossl) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the ECPKPARAMETERS_PRINT(3ossl) page from the OpenSSL 3ossl manual — yes, the whole thing is about printing out the public parameters of an elliptic curve, and yes it's deprecated, but we're gonna read it anyway because ✨knowledge✨.

🌸 NAME 🌸

ECPKParameters_print, ECPKParameters_print_fp — the functions for decoding and encoding ASN1 representations of elliptic curve entities. iykyk, it's giving "let me show you my curve's paperwork" 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

First up, the include. You need this:

#include <openssl/ec.h>
🚨 heads up bestie 🚨 the following functions have been deprecated since OpenSSL 3.0, and you can hide them entirely by defining OPENSSL_API_COMPAT with a suitable version value — go peek at openssl_user_macros(7) for that, k?

And here are the girls themselves, exactly as written:

int ECPKParameters_print(BIO *bp, const EC_GROUP *x, int off);
int ECPKParameters_print_fp(FILE *fp, const EC_GROUP *x, int off);

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

All of the functions described on this page are deprecated. Like, all of them. Every single one. Applications should instead use EVP_PKEY_print_params(3) — that's the main character now, periodt.

So, what even is an ECPKParameters? It represents the public parameters for an EC_GROUP structure, which represents a curve. That's the whole vibe. 🌀

Then we've got the two printing girlies:

  • ECPKParameters_print() — prints a human-readable output of the public parameters of the EC_GROUP to bp.
  • ECPKParameters_print_fp() — prints a human-readable output of the public parameters of the EC_GROUP to fp.

And the little detail everyone forgets: the output lines are indented by off spaces 🫶. That's it, that's the bit. So aesthetic of them.

⭐ RETURN VALUES ⭐

  • ECPKParameters_print() and ECPKParameters_print_fp() return 1 for success and 0 if an error occurs.

One for slay, zero for uh-oh. 🔥

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

the whole friend group, honestly 💜

🕰️ HISTORY 🕰️

All of these functions were deprecated in OpenSSL 3.0. tragic, but we move 💀

Copyright 2013-2021 The OpenSSL Project Authors. All Rights Reserved.

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0 (the "License"). You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You can obtain a copy in the file LICENSE in the source distribution or at <https://www.openssl.org/source/license.html>.

and that's the page bestie!! 🎀✨ this was version 3.5.0, dated 2026-09-25, and the title on the tin is ECPKPARAMETERS_PRINT(3ossl) — now go forth and not use deprecated functions 😭🫶💖

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