mkdtemp(3) - BetterMan

mkdtemp(3)

create a unique temporary directory

distropkg manpages-dev@6.9.1-1dataset 2026-04-01T06:19:02Z+debian+ec4110e+mandoc:1.14.6-4

Synopsis

#include <stdlib.h>
char *mkdtemp(char *
template
);
mkdtemp
():
/* Since glibc 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
        || /* glibc 2.19 and earlier: */ _BSD_SOURCE
        || /* Since glibc 2.10: */ _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200809L

—

Options · 1

EINVAL

The last six characters of template were not XXXXXX. Now template is unchanged.

NAME

mkdtemp - create a unique temporary directory

SYNOPSIS

bash

#include <stdlib.h>

bash

char *mkdtemp(char *\ntemplate\n);

mkdtemp():

bash


\n
    /* Since glibc 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
\n
        || /* glibc 2.19 and earlier: */ _BSD_SOURCE
\n
        || /* Since glibc 2.10: */ _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200809L

The mkdtemp() function generates a uniquely named temporary directory from template. The last six characters of template must be XXXXXX and these are replaced with a string that makes the directory name unique. The directory is then created with permissions 0700. Since it will be modified, template must not be a string constant, but should be declared as a character array.

RETURN VALUE

The mkdtemp() function returns a pointer to the modified template string on success, and NULL on failure, in which case errno is set to indicate the error.