man2/removexattr.2

.\" Copyright (C) Andreas Gruenbacher, February 2001
.\" Copyright (C) Silicon Graphics Inc, September 2001
.\"
.\" %%%LICENSE_START(GPLv2+_DOC_FULL)
.\" This is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or
.\" modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
.\" published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
.\" the License, or (at your option) any later version.
.\"
.\" The GNU General Public License's references to "object code"
.\" and "executables" are to be interpreted as the output of any
.\" document formatting or typesetting system, including
.\" intermediate and printed output.
.\"
.\" This manual is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
.\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
.\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
.\" GNU General Public License for more details.
.\"
.\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
.\" License along with this manual; if not, see
.\" <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
.\" %%%LICENSE_END
.\"
.TH REMOVEXATTR 2 2021-03-22 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
removexattr, lremovexattr, fremovexattr \- remove an extended attribute
.SH SYNOPSIS
.fam C
.nf
.B #include <sys/xattr.h>
.PP
.BI "int removexattr(const char\ *" path ", const char\ *" name );
.BI "int lremovexattr(const char\ *" path ", const char\ *" name );
.BI "int fremovexattr(int " fd ", const char\ *" name );
.fi
.fam T
.SH DESCRIPTION
Extended attributes are
.IR name : value
pairs associated with inodes (files, directories, symbolic links, etc.).
They are extensions to the normal attributes which are associated
with all inodes in the system (i.e., the
.BR stat (2)
data).
A complete overview of extended attributes concepts can be found in
.BR xattr (7).
.PP
.BR removexattr ()
removes the extended attribute identified by
.I name
and associated with the given
.I path
in the filesystem.
.PP
.BR lremovexattr ()
is identical to
.BR removexattr (),
except in the case of a symbolic link, where the extended attribute is
removed from the link itself, not the file that it refers to.
.PP
.BR fremovexattr ()
is identical to
.BR removexattr (),
only the extended attribute is removed from the open file referred to by
.I fd
(as returned by
.BR open (2))
in place of
.IR path .
.PP
An extended attribute name is a null-terminated string.
The
.I name
includes a namespace prefix; there may be several, disjoint
namespaces associated with an individual inode.
.SH RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned.
On failure, \-1 is returned and
.I errno
is set to indicate the error.
.SH ERRORS
.TP
.B ENODATA
The named attribute does not exist.
.\" .RB ( ENOATTR
.\" is defined to be a synonym for
.\" .BR ENODATA
.\" in
.\" .IR <attr/attributes.h> .)
.TP
.B ENOTSUP
Extended attributes are not supported by the filesystem, or are disabled.
.PP
In addition, the errors documented in
.BR stat (2)
can also occur.
.SH VERSIONS
These system calls have been available on Linux since kernel 2.4;
glibc support is provided since version 2.3.
.SH CONFORMING TO
These system calls are Linux-specific.
.\" .SH AUTHORS
.\" Andreas Gruenbacher,
.\" .RI < a.gruenbacher@computer.org >
.\" and the SGI XFS development team,
.\" .RI < linux-xfs@oss.sgi.com >.
.\" Please send any bug reports or comments to these addresses.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR getfattr (1),
.BR setfattr (1),
.BR getxattr (2),
.BR listxattr (2),
.BR open (2),
.BR setxattr (2),
.BR stat (2),
.BR symlink (7),
.BR xattr (7)