March 22, 1999 REVOKE 2

### NAME

revoke - revoke file access

### LIBRARY

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

### SYNOPSIS

```int` revoke(```const char *path`)

### DESCRIPTION

The revoke function invalidates all current open file descriptors in the system for the file named by ```path`. Subsequent operations on any such descriptors fail, with the exceptions that a read(``) from a character device file which has been revoked returns a count of zero (end of file), and a close(``) call will succeed. If the file is a special file for a device which is open, the device close function is called as if all open references to the file had been closed.

Access to a file may be revoked only by its owner or the super user.

revoke is normally used to prepare a terminal device for a new login session, preventing any access by a previous user of the terminal.

### RETURN VALUES

A 0 value indicates that the call succeeded. A -1 return value indicates an error occurred and errno is set to indicate the reason.

### ERRORS

Access to the named file is revoked unless one of the following:

[```ENOTDIR`]
  A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

[```ENAMETOOLONG`]
  A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an entire path name exceeded 1024 characters.

[```ENOENT`]
  The named file or a component of the path name does not exist.

[```EACCES`]
  Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.

[```ELOOP`]
  Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.

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

[```EPERM`]
  The caller is neither the owner of the file nor the super user.

### SEE ALSO

close(2), dup(2), fcntl(2), flock(2), fstat(2), read(2), write(2)

### HISTORY

The revoke function was introduced in 4.3BSDReno.