perror

 

C

Language

Standard Library

Type support

Dynamic memory management

Error handling

Program utilities

Date and time utilities

Strings library

Algorithms

Numerics

Input/output support

Localization support

Thread support (C11)

Atomic operations (C11)

 

File input/output

Functions
File access
fopen freopen fclose fflush	fwide setbuf setvbuf
Direct input/output
fread
fwrite
Unformatted input/output
fgetc fgets fputc fputs getchar gets putchar puts ungetc	fgetwc fgetws fputwc fputws getwchar putwchar ungetwc
Formatted input/output
scanffscanfsscanf vscanfvfscanfvsscanf (C99)(C99)(C99) printffprintfsprintfsnprintf (C99) vprintfvfprintfvsprintfvsnprintf (C99)	wscanffwscanfswscanf vwscanfvfwscanfvswscanf (C99)(C99)(C99) wprintffwprintfswprintf vwprintfvfwprintfvswprintf
File positioning
ftell
fgetpos
fseek
fsetpos
rewind
Error handling
clearerr
feof
ferror
perror
Operations on files
remove
rename
tmpfile
tmpnam

 

Defined in header <stdio.h>
void perror( const char *s );

Prints to stderr the contents of the null-terminated character string pointed to by s (unless s is a null pointer), followed by the two characters ": ", followed by the implementation-defined error message describing the error code currently stored in the system variable errno (identical to the output of strerror(errno)), followed by '\n'.

Parameters

s

-

pointer to a null-terminated string with explanatory message

Return value

(none)

Example

Run this code

#include <stdio.h>
 
int main(void)
{
    FILE* f = fopen("non_existent", "r");
    if (f == NULL) {
        perror("open()");
    } else {
        fclose(f);
    }
}

Output:

open(): No such file or directory

See also

strerror	returns a text version of a given error code (function)
C++ documentation for perror