ERR_LOAD_CRYPTO_STRINGS(3SSL)

💖 ERR_LOAD_CRYPTO_STRINGS 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the 3SSL girlies' corner of the OpenSSL manual 💅 this page is literally about loading and freeing error strings, and it's giving legacy, because literally every function on it is deprecated. so buckle up 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

ERR_load_crypto_strings, SSL_load_error_strings, ERR_free_strings — load and free error strings 🫶

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

so the way that these functions have been deprecated since OpenSSL 1.1.0, and you can hide them entirely by defining OPENSSL_API_COMPAT with a suitable version value — check openssl_user_macros(7) for that, iykyk ✨

#include <openssl/err.h>

void ERR_load_crypto_strings(void);
void ERR_free_strings(void);

#include <openssl/ssl.h>

void SSL_load_error_strings(void);

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so ERR_load_crypto_strings() registers the error strings for all the libcrypto functions. all of them. no cap 💖

SSL_load_error_strings() does the same thing, but it also registers the libssl error strings. so it's the overachiever one, the main character 👑

and in versions prior to OpenSSL 1.1.0, ERR_free_strings() releases any resources created by the above functions. so it was the cleanup crew. it's not that anymore though, lowkey 😭

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✨ RETURN VALUES ✨

ERR_load_crypto_strings(), SSL_load_error_strings() and ERR_free_strings() return no values. nothing. zero. void behavior, literally ✨

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

• ERR_error_string(3) — go read that one too bestie 🦋

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✨ HISTORY ✨

so the lore is: ERR_load_crypto_strings(), SSL_load_error_strings(), and ERR_free_strings() were deprecated in OpenSSL 1.1.0 by OPENSSL_init_crypto() and OPENSSL_init_ssl().

🚨 and listen — they should not be used. fr fr. not me trying to be dramatic, that's just what the page says 💀

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✨ COPYRIGHT ✨

Copyright 2000-2017 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>.

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and that's the whole page bestie, ty for coming to my ted talk 🌸 this was OpenSSL 4.0.3, dated 2026-09-29, mwah 💋 periodt ✨💅