mktemp -- make temporary file name (unique)
mktemp [-d] [-q] [-t prefix] [-u] template ...
mktemp [-d] [-q] [-u] -t prefix
The mktemp utility takes each of the given file name templates and overwrites
a portion of it to create a file name. This file name is unique
and suitable for use by the application. The template may be any file
name with some number of `Xs' appended to it, for example /tmp/temp.XXXX.
The trailing `Xs' are replaced with the current process number and/or a
unique letter combination. The number of unique file names mktemp can
return depends on the number of `Xs' provided; six `Xs' will result in
mktemp testing roughly 26 ** 6 combinations.
If mktemp can successfully generate a unique file name, the file is created
with mode 0600 (unless the -u flag is given) and the filename is
printed to standard output.
If the -t prefix option is given, mktemp will generate a template string
based on the prefix and the TMPDIR environment variable if set. The
default location if TMPDIR is not set is /tmp. Care should be taken to
ensure that it is appropriate to use an environment variable potentially
supplied by the user.
Any number of temporary files may be created in a single invocation,
including one based on the internal template resulting from the -t flag.
The mktemp utility is provided to allow shell scripts to safely use temporary
files. Traditionally, many shell scripts take the name of the
program with the pid as a suffix and use that as a temporary file name.
This kind of naming scheme is predictable and the race condition it creates
is easy for an attacker to win. A safer, though still inferior,
approach is to make a temporary directory using the same naming scheme.
While this does allow one to guarantee that a temporary file will not be
subverted, it still allows a simple denial of service attack. For these
reasons it is suggested that mktemp be used instead.
The available options are as follows:
-d Make a directory instead of a file.
-q Fail silently if an error occurs. This is useful if a script
does not want error output to go to standard error.
-t prefix
Generate a template (using the supplied prefix and TMPDIR if set)
to create a filename template.
-u Operate in ``unsafe'' mode. The temp file will be unlinked
before mktemp exits. This is slightly better than mktemp(3) but
still introduces a race condition. Use of this option is not
encouraged.
The mktemp utility exits 0 on success, and 1 if an error occurs.
The following sh(1) fragment illustrates a simple use of mktemp where the
script should quit if it cannot get a safe temporary file.
tempfoo=`basename $0`
TMPFILE=`mktemp /tmp/${tempfoo}.XXXXXX` || exit 1
echo "program output" >> $TMPFILE
To allow the use of $TMPDIR:
tempfoo=`basename $0`
TMPFILE=`mktemp -t ${tempfoo}` || exit 1
echo "program output" >> $TMPFILE
In this case, we want the script to catch the error itself.
tempfoo=`basename $0`
TMPFILE=`mktemp -q /tmp/${tempfoo}.XXXXXX`
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
echo "$0: Can't create temp file, exiting..."
exit 1
fi
mkdtemp(3), mkstemp(3), mktemp(3), environ(7)
A mktemp utility appeared in OpenBSD 2.1. This implementation was written
independently based on the OpenBSD man page, and first appeared in
FreeBSD 2.2.7. This man page is taken from OpenBSD
FreeBSD 5.2.1 November 20, 1996 FreeBSD 5.2.1 [ Back ] |