[MAN] mktemp

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MKTEMP

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: January 2018
Index Return to Main Contents

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NAME

mktemp - create a temporary file or directory  

SYNOPSIS

mktemp [,OPTION/]... [,TEMPLATE/]  

DESCRIPTION

Create a temporary file or directory, safely, and print its name. TEMPLATE must contain at least 3 consecutive 'X's in last component. If TEMPLATE is not specified, use tmp.XXXXXXXXXX, and --tmpdir is implied. Files are created u+rw, and directories u+rwx, minus umask restrictions.

-d, --directory

create a directory, not a file

-u, --dry-run

do not create anything; merely print a name (unsafe)

-q, --quiet

suppress diagnostics about file/dir-creation failure

--suffix=,SUFF/

append SUFF to TEMPLATE; SUFF must not contain a slash. This option is implied if TEMPLATE does not end in X

-p DIR, --tmpdir[=,DIR/]

interpret TEMPLATE relative to DIR; if DIR is not specified, use $TMPDIR if set, else ,/tmp/. With this option, TEMPLATE must not be an absolute name; unlike with -t, TEMPLATE may contain slashes, but mktemp creates only the final component

-t

interpret TEMPLATE as a single file name component, relative to a directory: $TMPDIR, if set; else the directory specified via -p; else ,/tmp/ [deprecated]

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

 

AUTHOR

Written by Jim Meyering and Eric Blake.  

REPORTING BUGS

GNU coreutils online help: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report mktemp translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>  

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  

SEE ALSO

mkstemp(3), mkdtemp(3), mktemp(3)

Full documentation at: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/mktemp>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) mktemp invocation'

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Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

AUTHOR

REPORTING BUGS

COPYRIGHT

SEE ALSO

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MKTEMP

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (3)
Updated: 2017-09-15
Index Return to Main Contents

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NAME

mktemp - make a unique temporary filename  

SYNOPSIS

#include <stdlib.h>

char *mktemp(char *template);

Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

mktemp():

Since glibc 2.12:

(_XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500) && ! (_POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L)
    || /* Glibc since 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
    || /* Glibc <= 2.19: */ _SVID_SOURCE || _BSD_SOURCE

Before glibc 2.12:

_BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500

 

DESCRIPTION

Never use this function; see BUGS.

The mktemp() function generates a unique temporary filename from template. The last six characters of template must be XXXXXX and these are replaced with a string that makes the filename unique. Since it will be modified, template must not be a string constant, but should be declared as a character array.  

RETURN VALUE

The mktemp() function always returns template. If a unique name was created, the last six bytes of template will have been modified in such a way that the resulting name is unique (i.e., does not exist already) If a unique name could not be created, template is made an empty string, and errno is set to indicate the error.  

ERRORS

EINVAL

The last six characters of template were not XXXXXX.

 

ATTRIBUTES

For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).

Interface	Attribute	Value
mktemp()	Thread safety	MT-Safe

 

CONFORMING TO

4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001. POSIX.1-2008 removes the specification of mktemp().  

BUGS

Never use mktemp(). Some implementations follow 4.3BSD and replace XXXXXX by the current process ID and a single letter, so that at most 26 different names can be returned. Since on the one hand the names are easy to guess, and on the other hand there is a race between testing whether the name exists and opening the file, every use of mktemp() is a security risk. The race is avoided by mkstemp(3) and mkdtemp(3).  

SEE ALSO

mktemp(1), mkdtemp(3), mkstemp(3), tempnam(3), tmpfile(3), tmpnam(3)  

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 4.15 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be found at https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

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Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

RETURN VALUE

ERRORS

ATTRIBUTES

CONFORMING TO

BUGS

SEE ALSO

COLOPHON

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