| SYSCALL(2) | System Calls Manual | SYSCALL(2) | 
syscall, __syscall —
#include <sys/syscall.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int
  
  syscall(int
    number, ...);
quad_t
  
  __syscall(quad_t
    number, ...);
syscall() performs the system call whose assembly
  language interface has the specified number with the
  specified arguments. Symbolic constants for system calls can be found in the
  header file ⟨sys/syscall.h⟩. The
  __syscall form should be used when one or more of the
  parameters is a 64-bit argument to ensure that argument alignment is correct.
This system call is useful for testing new system calls that do not have entries in the C library. It should not be used in normal applications.
syscall() function call appeared in
  4.0BSD.
Since architectures return 32 bit and 64 bit results in different
    registers, it may be impossible to portably convert the result of
    __syscall() to a 32bit value. For instance sparc
    returns 32 bit values in %o0 and 64 bit values in %o0:%o1 (with %o0
    containing the most significant part) so a 32 bit right shift of the result
    is needed to get a correct 32 bit result.
Many architectures mask off the unwanted high bits of the syscall number, rather than returning an error.
Due to ABI implementation differences in passing struct or union type arguments to system calls between different processors, all system calls pass instead pointers to such structs or unions, even when the documentation of the system call mentions otherwise. The conversion between passing structs and unions is handled normally via userland stubs. The correct arguments for the kernel entry points for each system call can be found in the header file ⟨sys/syscallargs.h⟩
| August 7, 2009 | NetBSD 9.4 |