April 29, 1995 DEVNAME 3

### NAME

devname - get device name

### LIBRARY

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

### SYNOPSIS

```char``*` devname(```dev_t dev``, mode_t type`)

### DESCRIPTION

The devname(``) function returns a pointer to the name of the block or character device in `````/dev`'' with a device number of ```dev`, and a file type matching the one encoded in ```type` which must be one of S_IFBLK or S_IFCHR. The device name is cached so that multiple calls with the same ```dev` and ```type` do not require additional queries of the device database file. If no device matches the specified values, or no information is available, ```NULL` is returned.

The traditional display for applications when no device is found is the string ``??''.

### FILES

```/var/run/dev.db`
  Device database file.

### SEE ALSO

stat(2), dev_mkdb(8)

### HISTORY

The devname function call appeared in 4.4BSD.