TRUNCATE(2)

NAME
truncate, ftruncate - truncate or extend a file to a specified length

LIBRARY
libc

SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
int
truncate(const char *path, off_t length);
int
ftruncate(int fd, off_t length);

DESCRIPTION
The truncate() system call causes the file named by path or referenced by fd to be truncated or extended to length bytes in size. If the file was larger than this size, the extra data is lost. If the file was smaller than this size, it will be extended as if by writing bytes with the value zero. With ftruncate(), the file must be open for writing.

RETURN VALUES
If the file to be modified is not a directory or a regular file, the truncate() call has no effect and returns the value 0.

ERRORS
The truncate() system call succeeds unless:

[ENOTDIR]
    A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

[ENAMETOOLONG]
    A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.

[ENOENT]
    The named file does not exist.

[EACCES]
    Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.

[EACCES]
    The named file is not writable by the user.

[ELOOP]
    Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.

[EPERM]
    The named file has its immutable or append-only flag set, see the chflags(2) manual page for more information.

[EISDIR]
    The named file is a directory.

[EROFS]
    The named file resides on a read-only file system.

[ETXTBSY]
    The file is a pure procedure (shared text) file that is being executed.

[EFBIG]
    The length argument was greater than the maximum file size.

[EINVAL]
    The length argument was less than 0.

[EIO]
    An I/O error occurred updating the inode.

[EFAULT]
    The path argument points outside the process's allocated address space.

The ftruncate() system call succeeds unless:

[EBADF]
    The fd argument is not a valid descriptor.

[EINVAL]
    The fd argument references a socket, not a file.

[EINVAL]
    The fd descriptor is not open for writing.

SEE ALSO
chflags(2), open(2)

HISTORY
The truncate() system call appeared in 4.2BSD.

BUGS
These calls should be generalized to allow ranges of bytes in a file to be discarded.

Use of truncate() to extend a file is not portable.