This document is a Mac OS X manual page. Manual pages are a command-line technology for providing documentation. You can view these manual pages locally using the man(1) command. These manual pages come from many different sources, and thus, have a variety of writing styles.

This manual page is associated with the Mac OS X developer tools. The software or headers described may not be present on your Mac OS X installation until you install the developer tools package. This package is available on your Mac OS X installation DVD, and the latest versions can be downloaded from developer.apple.com.

For more information about the manual page format, see the manual page for manpages(5).

CHFLAGS(2)                  BSD System Calls Manual                 CHFLAGS(2)

NAME
     chflags, fchflags -- set file flags

SYNOPSIS
     #include <sys/stat.h>
     #include <unistd.h>

     int
     chflags(const char *path, u_int flags);

     int
     fchflags(int fd, u_int flags);

DESCRIPTION
     The file whose name is given by path or referenced by the descriptor fd has its flags changed to flags.

     The flags specified are formed by or'ing the following values

           UF_NODUMP      Do not dump the file.
           UF_IMMUTABLE   The file may not be changed.
           UF_APPEND      The file may only be appended to.
           UF_OPAQUE      The directory is opaque when viewed through a union stack.
           UF_HIDDEN      The file or directory is not intended to be displayed to the user.
           SF_ARCHIVED    The file has been archived.
           SF_IMMUTABLE   The file may not be changed.
           SF_APPEND      The file may only be appended to.

     The ``UF_IMMUTABLE'', ``UF_APPEND'', ``UF_OPAQUE'', and ``UF_HIDDEN'' flags may be set or unset by
     either the owner of a file or the super-user.

     The ``SF_ARCHIVED'', ``SF_IMMUTABLE'' and ``SF_APPEND'' flags may only be set or unset by the super-user. superuser.
     user.  They may be set at any time, but normally may only be unset when the system is in single-user
     mode.  (See init(8) for details.)

RETURN VALUES
     Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned.  Otherwise, -1 is returned and the global vari-able variable
     able errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS
     Chflags() will fail it:

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

     [ENAMETOOLONG]     A component of a pathname exceeded {NAME_MAX} characters, or an entire path name
                        exceeded {PATH_MAX} characters.

     [ENOENT]           The named file 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.

     [EPERM]            The effective user ID does not match the owner of the file and the effective user ID
                        is not the super-user.

     [EROFS]            The named file resides on a read-only file system.

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

     [EIO]              An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.

     Fchflags() will fail if:

     [EBADF]            The descriptor is not valid.

     [EINVAL]           fd refers to a socket, not to a file.

     [EPERM]            The effective user ID does not match the owner of the file and the effective user ID
                        is not the super-user.

     [EROFS]            The file resides on a read-only file system.

     [EIO]              An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.

SEE ALSO
     chflags(1), fflagstostr(3), strtofflags(3), init(8)

HISTORY
     The chflags() and fchflags functions first appeared in 4.4BSD.

BSD                              June 9, 1993                              BSD