NAME¶

execl, execlp, execle, execv, execvp, execvpe - execute a file

SYNOPSIS¶

#include <unistd.h>

extern char **environ;

int execl(const char *path, const char *arg, ...
                /* (char  *) NULL */);
int execlp(const char *file, const char *arg, ...
                /* (char  *) NULL */);
int execle(const char *path, const char *arg, ...
                /*, (char *) NULL, char * const envp[] */);
int execv(const char *path, char *const argv[]);
int execvp(const char *file, char *const argv[]);
int execvpe(const char *file, char *const argv[],
                char *const envp[]);

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

execvpe(): _GNU_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION¶

The exec() family of functions replaces the current process image with a new process image. The functions described in this manual page are front-ends for execve(2). (See the manual page for execve(2) for further details about the replacement of the current process image.)

The initial argument for these functions is the name of a file that is to be executed.

The const char *arg and subsequent ellipses in the execl(), execlp(), and execle() functions can be thought of as arg0, arg1, ..., argn. Together they describe a list of one or more pointers to null-terminated strings that represent the argument list available to the executed program. The first argument, by convention, should point to the filename associated with the file being executed. The list of arguments must be terminated by a null pointer, and, since these are variadic functions, this pointer must be cast (char *) NULL.

The execv(), execvp(), and execvpe() functions provide an array of pointers to null-terminated strings that represent the argument list available to the new program. The first argument, by convention, should point to the filename associated with the file being executed. The array of pointers must be terminated by a null pointer.

The execle() and execvpe() functions allow the caller to specify the environment of the executed program via the argument envp. The envp argument is an array of pointers to null-terminated strings and must be terminated by a null pointer. The other functions take the environment for the new process image from the external variable environ in the calling process.

RETURN VALUE¶

The exec() functions return only if an error has occurred. The return value is -1, and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS¶

All of these functions may fail and set errno for any of the errors specified for execve(2).

VERSIONS¶

The execvpe() function first appeared in glibc 2.11.

ATTRIBUTES¶

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

CONFORMING TO¶

POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008.

The execvpe() function is a GNU extension.

NOTES¶

The default search path (used when the environment does not contain the variable PATH) shows some variation across systems. It generally includes /bin and /usr/bin (in that order) and may also include the current working directory. On some other systems, the current working is included after /bin and /usr/bin, as an anti-Trojan-horse measure. The glibc implementation long followed the traditional default where the current working directory is included at the start of the search path. However, some code refactoring during the development of glibc 2.24 caused the current working directory to be dropped altogether from the default search path. This accidental behavior change is considered mildly beneficial, and won't be reverted.

The behavior of execlp() and execvp() when errors occur while attempting to execute the file is historic practice, but has not traditionally been documented and is not specified by the POSIX standard. BSD (and possibly other systems) do an automatic sleep and retry if ETXTBSY is encountered. Linux treats it as a hard error and returns immediately.

Traditionally, the functions execlp() and execvp() ignored all errors except for the ones described above and ENOMEM and E2BIG, upon which they returned. They now return if any error other than the ones described above occurs.

BUGS¶

Before glibc 2.24, execl() and execle() employed realloc(3) internally and were consequently not async-signal-safe, in violation of the requirements of POSIX.1. This was fixed in glibc 2.24.

SEE ALSO¶

sh(1), execve(2), execveat(2), fork(2), ptrace(2), fexecve(3), system(3), environ(7)

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/.