The getexecname() function returns the pathname (the first argument of one of the exec family of functions; see exec(2)) of the executable that started the process.

Normally this is an absolute pathname, as the majority of commands are executed by the shells that append the command name to the user's PATH components. If this is not an absolute path, the output of getcwd(3C) can be prepended to it to create an absolute path, unless the process or one of its ancestors has changed its root directory or current working directory since the last successful call to one of the exec family of functions.

If successful, getexecname() returns a pointer to the executables pathname; otherwise, it returns 0.

The getexecname() function obtains the executable pathname from the AT_SUN_EXECNAME aux vector. These vectors are made available to dynamically linked processes only.

A successful call to one of the exec family of functions will always have AT_SUN_EXECNAME in the aux vector. The associated pathname is guaranteed to be less than or equal to PATH_MAX, not counting the trailing null byte that is always present.

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

exec(2), getcwd(3C), attributes(5)