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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | VERSIONS | ATTRIBUTES | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | EXAMPLE | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
QSORT(3) Linux Programmer's Manual QSORT(3)
qsort, qsort_r - sort an array
#include <stdlib.h>
void qsort(void *base, size_t nmemb, size_t size,
int (*compar)(const void *, const void *));
void qsort_r(void *base, size_t nmemb, size_t size,
int (*compar)(const void *, const void *, void *),
void *arg);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
qsort_r(): _GNU_SOURCE
The qsort() function sorts an array with nmemb elements of size size.
The base argument points to the start of the array.
The contents of the array are sorted in ascending order according to
a comparison function pointed to by compar, which is called with two
arguments that point to the objects being compared.
The comparison function must return an integer less than, equal to,
or greater than zero if the first argument is considered to be
respectively less than, equal to, or greater than the second. If two
members compare as equal, their order in the sorted array is
undefined.
The qsort_r() function is identical to qsort() except that the
comparison function compar takes a third argument. A pointer is
passed to the comparison function via arg. In this way, the
comparison function does not need to use global variables to pass
through arbitrary arguments, and is therefore reentrant and safe to
use in threads.
The qsort() and qsort_r() functions return no value.
qsort_r() was added to glibc in version 2.8.
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
attributes(7).
┌───────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐
│Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├───────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
│qsort(), qsort_r() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
└───────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘
qsort(): POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, C89, C99, SVr4, 4.3BSD.
To compare C strings, the comparison function can call strcmp(3), as
shown in the example below.
For one example of use, see the example under bsearch(3).
Another example is the following program, which sorts the strings
given in its command-line arguments:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
static int
cmpstringp(const void *p1, const void *p2)
{
/* The actual arguments to this function are "pointers to
pointers to char", but strcmp(3) arguments are "pointers
to char", hence the following cast plus dereference */
return strcmp(* (char * const *) p1, * (char * const *) p2);
}
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int j;
if (argc < 2) {
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s <string>...\n", argv[0]);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
qsort(&argv[1], argc - 1, sizeof(char *), cmpstringp);
for (j = 1; j < argc; j++)
puts(argv[j]);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
sort(1), alphasort(3), strcmp(3), versionsort(3)
This page is part of release 4.12 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
latest version of this page, can be found at
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
2015-08-08 QSORT(3)
Pages that refer to this page: bsearch(3), fts(3), scandir(3), tsearch(3)