'\"macro stdmacro
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.TH PMERRSTR 3 "PCP" "Performance Co-Pilot"
.SH NAME
\f3pmErrStr\f1,
\f3pmErrStr_r\f1 \- convert a PMAPI error code into a string
.SH "C SYNOPSIS"
.ft 3
#include <pcp/pmapi.h>
.sp
const char *pmErrStr(int \fIcode\fP);
.br
char *pmErrStr_r(int \fIcode\fP, char *\fIbuf\fP, int \fIbuflen\fP);
.sp
cc ... \-lpcp
.ft 1
.SH DESCRIPTION
Translate an error code into a text string, suitable for generating a
diagnostic message.
The
.B pmErrStr_r
function does the same, but stores the result in a user-supplied buffer
.I buf
of length
.IR buflen ,
which should have room for at least
.B PM_MAXERRMSGLEN
bytes.
.PP
By convention, all error codes are negative.
The small
values are assumed to be negated versions of the Unix error codes as defined
in
.B <errno.h>
and the strings returned are as per
.BR strerror (3).
The larger, negative error codes are
Performance Metrics Application Programming Interface (PMAPI)
error conditions and
.BR pmErrStr (3)
returns an appropriate PMAPI error string, as determined by
.IR code .
.SH NOTES
.B pmErrStr
returns a pointer to a static buffer,
so the returned value is only valid until the next call to
.B pmErrStr
and hence is not thread-safe.
Multi-threaded applications should use
.B pmErrStr_r
instead.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR pmerr (1),
.BR PMAPI (3)
and
.BR perror (3).

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