#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/xattr.h>
ssize_t getxattr(const char *path, const char *name,
void *value, size_t size);
ssize_t lgetxattr(const char *path, const char *name,
void *value, size_t size);
ssize_t fgetxattr(int fd, const char *name,
void *value, size_t size);
getxattr() retrieves the value of the extended attribute identified by name and associated with the given path in the filesystem. The length of the attribute value is returned.
lgetxattr() is identical to getxattr(), except in the case of a symbolic link, where the link itself is interrogated, not the file that it refers to.
fgetxattr() is identical to getxattr(), only the open file referred to by fd (as returned by open(2)) is interrogated in place of path.
An extended attribute name is a simple null-terminated string. The name includes a namespace prefix; there may be several, disjoint namespaces associated with an individual inode. The value of an extended attribute is a chunk of arbitrary textual or binary data of specified length.
An empty buffer of size zero can be passed into these calls to return the current size of the named extended attribute, which can be used to estimate the size of a buffer which is sufficiently large to hold the value associated with the extended attribute.
The interface is designed to allow guessing of initial buffer sizes, and to enlarge buffers when the return value indicates that the buffer provided was too small.
In addition, the errors documented in stat(2) can also occur.