#include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/xattr.h> ssize_t listxattr(const char *path, char *list, size_t size); ssize_t llistxattr(const char *path, char *list, size_t size); ssize_t flistxattr(int fd, char *list, size_t size);
listxattr() retrieves the list of extended attribute names associated with the given path in the filesystem. The retrieved list is placed in list, a caller-allocated buffer whose size (in bytes) is specified in the argument size. The list is the set of (null-terminated) names, one after the other. Names of extended attributes to which the calling process does not have access may be omitted from the list. The length of the attribute name list is returned.
llistxattr() is identical to listxattr(), except in the case of a symbolic link, where the list of names of extended attributes associated with the link itself is retrieved, not the file that it refers to.
flistxattr() is identical to listxattr(), only the open file referred to by fd (as returned by open(2)) is interrogated in place of path.
A single 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.
An empty buffer of size zero can be passed into these calls to return the current size of the list of extended attribute names, which can be used to estimate the size of a buffer which is sufficiently large to hold the list of names.
user.name1\0system.name1\0user.name2\0
Filesystems like ext2, ext3 and XFS which implement POSIX ACLs using extended attributes, might return a list like this:
system.posix_acl_access\0system.posix_acl_default\0
In addition, the errors documented in stat(2) can also occur.