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FPARSELN(3)		     Library Functions Manual		     FPARSELN(3)

NAME
     fparseln -- return the next logical line from a stream

LIBRARY
     System Utilities Library (libutil, -lutil)

SYNOPSIS
     #include <stdio.h>
     #include <libutil.h>

     char *
     fparseln(FILE *stream, size_t *len, size_t *lineno, const char delim[3],
	 int flags);

DESCRIPTION
     The fparseln() function returns a pointer to the next logical line from the
     stream  referenced  by stream.  This string is NUL terminated and it is dy-
     namically allocated on each invocation.  It is the  responsibility  of  the
     caller to free the pointer.

     By  default,  if  a  character is escaped, both it and the preceding escape
     character will be present in the returned string.	Various flags alter this
     behaviour.

     The meaning of the arguments is as follows:

     stream  The stream to read from.

     len     If not NULL, the length of the string is stored in the memory loca-
	     tion to which it points.

     lineno  If not NULL, the value of the memory location to which  is  pointed
	     to,  is  incremented  by the number of lines actually read from the
	     file.

     delim   Contains the escape, continuation, and comment  characters.   If  a
	     character	is  NUL  then processing for that character is disabled.
	     If NULL, all characters default to  values  specified  below.   The
	     contents of delim is as follows:

	     delim[0]  The escape character, which defaults to \, is used to re-
		       move any special meaning from the next character.

	     delim[1]  The  continuation character, which defaults to \, is used
		       to indicate that the next  line	should	be  concatenated
		       with  the current one if this character is the last char-
		       acter on the current line and is not escaped.

	     delim[2]  The comment character, which defaults to #,  if	not  es-
		       caped  indicates  the beginning of a comment that extends
		       until the end of the current line.

     flags   If non-zero, alter the operation of fparseln().  The various flags,
	     which may be or-ed together, are:

	     FPARSELN_UNESCCOMM  Remove escape preceding an escaped comment.

	     FPARSELN_UNESCCONT  Remove escape preceding  an  escaped  continua-
				 tion.

	     FPARSELN_UNESCESC	 Remove escape preceding an escaped escape.

	     FPARSELN_UNESCREST  Remove escape preceding any other character.

	     FPARSELN_UNESCALL	 All of the above.

RETURN VALUES
     Upon successful completion a pointer to the parsed line is returned; other-
     wise, NULL is returned.

     The  fparseln() function uses internally fgetln(3), so all error conditions
     that apply to fgetln(3), apply to fparseln().  In addition  fparseln()  may
     set errno to ENOMEM and return NULL if it runs out of memory.

SEE ALSO
     fgetln(3)

HISTORY
     The fparseln() function first appeared in NetBSD 1.4 and FreeBSD 4.0.

FreeBSD 15.1			December 1, 1997		     FPARSELN(3)
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