The ldap_result() function is used to wait for and return the result of an operation previously initiated by one of the LDAP asynchronous operation functions , for example, ldap_search(3LDAP), and ldap_modify(3LDAP). Those functions all return -1 in case of error, and an invocation identifier upon successful initiation of the operation. The invocation identifier is picked by the library and is guaranteed to be unique across the LDAP session. It can be used to request the result of a specific operation from ldap_result() through the msgid parameter.

The ldap_result() function will block or not, depending upon the setting of the timeout parameter. If timeout is not a null pointer, it specifies a maximum interval to wait for the selection to complete. If timeout is a null pointer, the select blocks indefinitely. To effect a poll, the timeout argument should be a non-null pointer, pointing to a zero-valued timeval structure. See select(1) for further details.

If the result of a specific operation is required, msgid should be set to the invocation identifier returned when the operation was initiated, otherwise LDAP_RES_ANY should be supplied. The all parameter only has meaning for search responses and is used to select whether a single entry of the search response should be returned, or all results of the search should be returned.

A search response is made up of zero or more search entries followed by a search result. If all is set to -, search entries will be returned one at a time as they come in, by means of separate calls to ldap_result(). If it is set to -1, the search response will only be returned in its entirety, that is, after all entries and the final search result have been received.

Upon success, the type of the result received is returned and the result parameter will contain the result of the operation. This result should be passed to the LDAP parsing functions, (see ldap_first_entry(3LDAP)) for interpretation.

The possible result types returned are:

 #define LDAP_RES_BIND			0x61L
 #define LDAP_RES_SEARCH_ENTRY	0x64L
 #define LDAP_RES_SEARCH_RESULT	0x65L
 #define LDAP_RES_MODIFY			0x67L
 #define LDAP_RES_ADD			0x69L
 #define LDAP_RES_DELETE			0x6bL
 #define LDAP_RES_MODRDN		0x6dL
 #define LDAP_RES_COMPARE		0x6fL

The ldap_msgfree() function is used to free the memory allocated for a result by ldap_result() or ldap_search_s(3LDAP) functions. It takes a pointer to the result to be freed and returns the type of the message it freed.

ldap_result() returns -1 if something bad happens, and zero if the timeout specified was exceeded.

See attributes(5) for a description of the following attributes:

select(1), ldap(3LDAP), ldap_search(3LDAP) , attributes(5)

This function allocates memory for results that it receives. The memory can be freed by calling ldap_msgfree.