pcap_init(3pcap) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PCAP_INIT(3PCAP)                                            PCAP_INIT(3PCAP)

NAME top

       pcap_init - initialize the library

SYNOPSIS top

       #include <pcap/pcap.h>

       char errbuf[PCAP_ERRBUF_SIZE];

       int pcap_init(unsigned int opts, char *errbuf);

DESCRIPTION top

       pcap_init() is used to initialize the Packet Capture library.  opts
       specifies options for the library; currently, the options are:

       PCAP_CHAR_ENC_LOCAL
              Treat all strings supplied as arguments, and return all
              strings to the caller, as being in the local character
              encoding.

       PCAP_CHAR_ENC_UTF_8
              Treat all strings supplied as arguments, and return all
              strings to the caller, as being in UTF-8.

       On UNIX-like systems, the local character encoding is assumed to be
       UTF-8, so no character encoding transformations are done.

       On Windows, the local character encoding is the local ANSI code page.

       If pcap_init() is not called, strings are treated as being in the
       local ANSI code page on Windows, pcap_lookupdev(3PCAP) will succeed
       if there is a device on which to capture, and pcap_create(3PCAP)
       makes an attempt to check whether the string passed as an argument is
       a UTF-16LE string - note that this attempt is unsafe, as it may run
       past the end of the string - to handle pcap_lookupdev() returning a
       UTF-16LE string. Programs that don't call pcap_init() should, on
       Windows, call pcap_wsockinit() to initialize Winsock; this is not
       necessary if pcap_init() is called, as pcap_init() will initialize
       Winsock itself on Windows.

RETURN VALUE top

       pcap_init() returns 0 on success and -1 on failure.  If -1 is
       returned, errbuf is filled in with an appropriate error message.
       errbuf is assumed to be able to hold at least PCAP_ERRBUF_SIZE chars.

SEE ALSO top

       pcap(3PCAP)

COLOPHON top

       This page is part of the libpcap (packet capture library) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.tcpdump.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://www.tcpdump.org/#patches⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/the-tcpdump-group/libpcap.git⟩ on 2020-08-13.
       (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
       the repository was 2020-08-10.)  If you discover any rendering prob‐
       lems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is a bet‐
       ter or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have corrections
       or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not
       part of the original manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

                                11 April 2020               PCAP_INIT(3PCAP)