DLFCN(3)

NAME
dlopen, dlclose, dlsym, dladdr, dlctl, dlerror - dynamic link interface

LIBRARY
(These functions are not in a library. They are included in every dynamically linked program automatically.)

SYNOPSIS
#include <dlfcn.h>
void *
dlopen(const char *path, int mode);
int
dlclose(void *handle);
void *
dlsym(void * restrict handle, const char * restrict symbol);
int
dladdr(void * restrict addr, Dl_info * restrict dli);
int
dlctl(void *handle, int cmd, void *data);
char *
dlerror(void);

DESCRIPTION
These functions provide an interface to the run-time linker ld.so(1). They allow new shared objects to be loaded into the process' address space under program control. The dlopen() function takes a name of a shared object as the first argument. The shared object is mapped into the address space, relocated and its external references are resolved in the same way as is done with the implicitly loaded shared libraries at program startup. The argument can either be an absolute pathname or it can be of the form “lib<name>.so [.xx[.yy]] ” in which case the same library search rules apply that are used for “intrinsic” shared library searches. If the first argument is NULL, dlopen() returns a handle on the global symbol object. This object provides access to all symbols from an ordered set of objects consisting of the original program image and any dependencies loaded during startup.

The second argument has currently no effect, but should be set to DL_LAZY for future compatibility. dlopen() returns a handle to be used in calls to dlclose(), dlsym() and dlctl(). If the named shared object has already been loaded by a previous call to dlopen() (and not yet unloaded by dlclose()), a handle referring to the resident copy is returned.

dlclose() unlinks and removes the object referred to by handle from the process address space. If multiple calls to dlopen() have been done on this object (or the object was one loaded at startup time) the object is removed when its reference count drops to zero.

dlsym() looks for a definition of symbol in the shared object designated by handle. The symbols address is returned. If the symbol cannot be resolved, NULL is returned.

dladdr() examines all currently mapped shared objects for a symbol whose address -- as mapped in the process address space -- is closest to but not exceeding the value passed in the first argument addr. The symbols of a shared object are only eligible if addr is between the base address of the shared object and the value of the symbol “_end” in the same shared object. If no object for which this condition holds true can be found, dladdr() will return 0. Otherwise, a non-zero value is returned and the dli argument will be used to provide information on the selected symbol and the shared object it is contained in. The dli argument points at a caller-provided Dl_info structure defined as follows:

    typedef struct {
    	const char  *dli_fname;     /* File defining the symbol */
    	void	    *dli_fbase;     /* Base address */
    	const char  *dli_sname;     /* Symbol name */
    	const void  *dli_saddr;     /* Symbol address */
    } Dl_info;

The member dli_sname points at the nul-terminated name of the selected symbol, and dli_saddr is the actual address (as it appears in the process address space) of the symbol. The member dli_fname points at the file name corresponding to the shared object in which the symbol was found, while dli_fbase is the base address at which this shared object is loaded in the process address space. dli_fname and dli_fbase may be zero if the symbol was found in the internally generated “copy” section ( see link(5)) which is not associated with a file. Note: both strings pointed at by dli_fname and dli_sname reside in memory private to the run-time linker module and should not be modified by the caller.

dlctl() provides an interface similar to ioctl(2) to control several aspects of the run-time linker's operation. This interface is

dlerror() returns a character string representing the most recent error that has occurred while processing one of the other functions described here. If no dynamic linking errors have occurred since the last invocation of dlerror(), dlerror() returns NULL. Thus, invoking dlerror() a second time, immediately following a prior invocation, will result in NULL being returned.

SEE ALSO
ld(1), rtld(1), link(5)

HISTORY
Some of the dl* functions first appeared in SunOS 4.

BUGS
An error that occurs while processing a dlopen() request results in the termination of the program.