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This document is a Mac OS X manual page. Manual pages are a command-line technology for providing documentation. You can view these manual pages locally using the man(1) command. These manual pages come from many different sources, and thus, have a variety of writing styles. For more information about the manual page format, see the manual page for manpages(5). |
SYSCALL(2) BSD System Calls Manual SYSCALL(2) NAME syscall, __syscall -- indirect system call SYNOPSIS #include <sys/syscall.h> #include <unistd.h> int syscall(int number, ...); int __syscall(quad_t number, ...); DESCRIPTION Syscall() performs the system call whose assembly language interface has the specified number with the specified arguments. Symbolic constants for system calls can be found in the header file <sys/syscall.h>. The __syscall form should be used when one or more of the parameters is a 64-bit argument to ensure that argument alignment is correct. This sys-tem system tem call is useful for testing new system calls that do not have entries in the C library. RETURN VALUES The return values are defined by the system call being invoked. In gen-eral, general, eral, a 0 return value indicates success. A -1 return value indicates an error, and an error code is stored in errno. BUGS There is no way to simulate system calls that have multiple return values such as pipe(2). HISTORY The syscall() function call appeared in 4.0BSD. 4th Berkeley Distribution June 16, 1993 4th Berkeley Distribution |