PR_SET_NAME(2const) — Linux manual page

PR_SET_NAME(2const)                                   PR_SET_NAME(2const)

NAME         top

       PR_SET_NAME, PR_GET_NAME - operations on a process or thread

LIBRARY         top

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <linux/prctl.h>  /* Definition of PR_* constants */
       #include <sys/prctl.h>

       int prctl(PR_SET_NAME, char name[16]);
       int prctl(PR_GET_NAME, const char name[16]);

DESCRIPTION         top

       PR_SET_NAME
              Set the name of the calling thread, using the value in the
              location pointed to by name.

              The name can be up to 16 bytes long, including the
              terminating null byte.  If the length of the string,
              including the terminating null byte, exceeds 16 bytes, the
              string is silently truncated.

       PR_GET_NAME (since Linux 2.6.11)
              Return the name of the calling thread, in the buffer
              pointed to by name.  The returned string will be null-
              terminated.

       This is the same attribute that can be set via
       pthread_setname_np(3) and retrieved using pthread_getname_np(3).

RETURN VALUE         top

       On success, 0 is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
       set to indicate the error.

ERRORS         top

       EFAULT name is an invalid address.

FILES         top

       /proc/self/task/tid/comm
              The attribute is likewise accessible via this file (see
              proc_pid_comm(5)), where tid is the thread ID of the
              calling thread, as returned by gettid(2).

STANDARDS         top

       Linux.

HISTORY         top

       PR_SET_NAME
              Linux 2.6.9.

       PR_GET_NAME
              Linux 2.6.11.

SEE ALSO         top

       prctl(2), pthread_setname_np(3), pthread_getname_np(3),
       proc_pid_comm(5)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
       user-space interface documentation) project.  Information about
       the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, see
       ⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
       This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.15.tar.gz
       fetched from
       ⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on
       2025-08-11.  If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML
       version of the page, or you believe there is a better 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

Linux man-pages 6.15            2025-05-17            PR_SET_NAME(2const)

Pages that refer to this page: prctl(2)

HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH.