libcreate

A tiny C library that provides create() — identical to POSIX creat(), but with the missing e.

Ken Thompson once said that if he could change one thing about UNIX, he'd spell creat with an 'e'. Decades later, here it is.

#include <create.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    int fd = create("greeting.txt", 0644);
    if (fd < 0) {
        perror("create");
        return 1;
    }

    const char *msg = "Hello, world!\n";
    write(fd, msg, strlen(msg));
    close(fd);
    return 0;
}

Compile with:

cc -o example example.c -lcreate

make
sudo make install

make PREFIX=/opt/libcreate
sudo make PREFIX=/opt/libcreate install

make
make DESTDIR=/tmp/staging install

After installation, use pkg-config to get the right flags:

cc -o myapp myapp.c $(pkg-config --cflags --libs libcreate)

Copy include/create.h and src/create.c into your project and compile them directly:

cc -o myapp myapp.c create.c -Ipath/to/include

No special build flags are required.

Create or truncate a file. Equivalent to:

open(path, O_WRONLY | O_CREAT | O_TRUNC, mode)

Parameters:

Returns: A non-negative file descriptor on success (opened write-only), or -1 on failure with errno set.

Common errno values: EACCES, EISDIR, EMFILE, ENAMETOOLONG, ENOENT, ENOSPC, ENOTDIR.

Note: The returned file descriptor is write-only. Calling read() on it will fail with EBADF. Passing NULL as path is undefined behavior, matching creat().

create(path, mode) is equivalent to creat(path, mode) and to open(path, O_WRONLY | O_CREAT | O_TRUNC, mode). This equivalence is verified by the parity tests in tests/parity.c, which run both create() and creat() on the same scenarios and assert identical results, errno values, file sizes, and permission modes.

libcreate uses semantic versioning. The current version is 1.2.0.

• The shared library SONAME is libcreate.so.MAJOR. It only changes on a major version bump.
• The ABI is a single function (create), so it is exceptionally stable.
• Version macros LIBCREATE_VERSION_MAJOR, LIBCREATE_VERSION_MINOR, LIBCREATE_VERSION_PATCH, and LIBCREATE_VERSION are available in <create.h>.

# Build everything
make

# Run tests (static + shared)
make test

# Run with AddressSanitizer + UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer
make sanitize

# Verify only 'create' is exported from the shared library
make check-symbols

# Build the example
make examples

# See all targets
make help

# Configure, build, and test
cmake --preset default
cmake --build --preset default
ctest --preset default

# Generate coverage data
cmake --preset coverage
cmake --build --preset coverage
ctest --preset coverage

MIT

"What's one of the things I'd do differently if I were redesigning the UNIX system? I'd spell creat with an 'e'." — Ken Thompson

You're welcome, Ken.