IOCTL(2)

NAME
ioctl - control device

LIBRARY
libc

SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/ioctl.h>
int
ioctl(int d, unsigned long request, ...);

DESCRIPTION
The ioctl() system call manipulates the underlying device parameters of special files. In particular, many operating characteristics of character special files (e.g. terminals) may be controlled with ioctl() requests. The argument d must be an open file descriptor.

The third argument to ioctl() is traditionally named char *argp. Most uses of ioctl() however, require the third argument to be a caddr_t or an int.

An ioctl() request has encoded in it whether the argument is an “in” argument or “out” argument, and the size of the argument argp in bytes. Macros and defines used in specifying an ioctl request are located in the file <sys/ioctl.h>.

RETURN VALUES
If an error has occurred, a value of -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS
Ioctl() will fail if:

[EBADF]
    d is not a valid descriptor.

[ENOTTY]
    d is not associated with a character special device.

[ENOTTY]
    The specified request does not apply to the kind of object that the descriptor d references.

[EINVAL]
    request or argp is not valid.

[EFAULT]
    argp points outside the process's allocated address space.

SEE ALSO
execve(2), fcntl(2), intro(4), tty(4), ioctl(9)

HISTORY
An ioctl() function call appeared in AT&T UNIX.