dup(2) System Calls Manual dup(2)
NAME
dup, dup2, dup3 - duplicate a file descriptor
LIBRARY
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
int dup(int oldfd);
int dup2(int oldfd, int newfd);
#define _GNU_SOURCE /* See feature_test_macros(7) */
#include <fcntl.h> /* Definition of O_* constants */
#include <unistd.h>
int dup3(int oldfd, int newfd, int flags);
DESCRIPTION
The dup() system call allocates a new file descriptor that refers to the
same open file description as the descriptor oldfd. (For an explanation
of open file descriptions, see open(2).) The new file descriptor number
is guaranteed to be the lowest-numbered file descriptor that was unused
in the calling process.
After a successful return, the old and new file descriptors may be used
interchangeably. Since the two file descriptors refer to the same open
file description, they share file offset and file status flags; for ex-
ample, if the file offset is modified by using lseek(2) on one of the
file descriptors, the offset is also changed for the other file descrip-
tor.
The two file descriptors do not share file descriptor flags (the close-
on-exec flag). The close-on-exec flag (FD_CLOEXEC; see fcntl(2)) for
the duplicate descriptor is off.
dup2()
The dup2() system call performs the same task as dup(), but instead of
using the lowest-numbered unused file descriptor, it uses the file de-
scriptor number specified in newfd. In other words, the file descriptor
newfd is adjusted so that it now refers to the same open file descrip-
tion as oldfd.
If the file descriptor newfd was previously open, it is closed before
being reused; the close is performed silently (i.e., any errors during
the close are not reported by dup2()).
The steps of closing and reusing the file descriptor newfd are performed
atomically. This is important, because trying to implement equivalent
functionality using close(2) and dup() would be subject to race condi-
tions, whereby newfd might be reused between the two steps. Such reuse
could happen because the main program is interrupted by a signal handler
that allocates a file descriptor, or because a parallel thread allocates
a file descriptor.
Note the following points:
• If oldfd is not a valid file descriptor, then the call fails, and
newfd is not closed.
• If oldfd is a valid file descriptor, and newfd has the same value as
oldfd, then dup2() does nothing, and returns newfd.
dup3()
dup3() is the same as dup2(), except that:
• The caller can force the close-on-exec flag to be set for the new
file descriptor by specifying O_CLOEXEC in flags. See the descrip-
tion of the same flag in open(2) for reasons why this may be useful.
• If oldfd equals newfd, then dup3() fails with the error EINVAL.
RETURN VALUE
On success, these system calls return the new file descriptor. On er-
ror, -1 is returned, and errno is set to indicate the error.
ERRORS
EBADF oldfd isn't an open file descriptor.
EBADF newfd is out of the allowed range for file descriptors (see the
discussion of RLIMIT_NOFILE in getrlimit(2)).
EBUSY (Linux only) This may be returned by dup2() or dup3() during a
race condition with open(2) and dup().
EINTR The dup2() or dup3() call was interrupted by a signal; see sig-
nal(7).
EINVAL (dup3()) flags contain an invalid value.
EINVAL (dup3()) oldfd was equal to newfd.
EMFILE The per-process limit on the number of open file descriptors has
been reached (see the discussion of RLIMIT_NOFILE in getr-
limit(2)).
STANDARDS
dup()
dup2() POSIX.1-2008.
dup3() Linux.
HISTORY
dup()
dup2() POSIX.1-2001, SVr4, 4.3BSD.
dup3() Linux 2.6.27, glibc 2.9.
NOTES
The error returned by dup2() is different from that returned by fc-
ntl(..., F_DUPFD, ...) when newfd is out of range. On some systems,
dup2() also sometimes returns EINVAL like F_DUPFD.
If newfd was open, any errors that would have been reported at close(2)
time are lost. If this is of concern, then—unless the program is sin-
gle-threaded and does not allocate file descriptors in signal handlers—
the correct approach is not to close newfd before calling dup2(), be-
cause of the race condition described above. Instead, code something
like the following could be used:
/* Obtain a duplicate of 'newfd' that can subsequently
be used to check for close() errors; an EBADF error
means that 'newfd' was not open. */
tmpfd = dup(newfd);
if (tmpfd == -1 && errno != EBADF) {
/* Handle unexpected dup() error. */
}
/* Atomically duplicate 'oldfd' on 'newfd'. */
if (dup2(oldfd, newfd) == -1) {
/* Handle dup2() error. */
}
/* Now check for close() errors on the file originally
referred to by 'newfd'. */
if (tmpfd != -1) {
if (close(tmpfd) == -1) {
/* Handle errors from close. */
}
}
SEE ALSO
close(2), fcntl(2), open(2), pidfd_getfd(2)
Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-05-02 dup(2)
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