setpgrpvoid

setpgrpvoid is not a standard function in POSIX or mainstream C libraries. It does not appear in standard headers or documented UNIX APIs, and its meaning depends entirely on the codebase where it appears. In practice, setpgrpvoid may be a user-defined symbol, a typographical error for setpgrp, or a wrapper function named setpgrpvoid used to hide or alter the behavior of process-group management.

If you encounter a function named setpgrpvoid, its concrete behavior is determined by its declaration and implementation. The name’s suffix suggests it could be a void-returning variant (for example, a function declared as void setpgrpvoid(void) or similar) that internally performs a process-group operation and discards the normal return value. Alternatively, it could be a wrapper around standard routines, possibly calling setpgrp or setpgid and omitting error reporting.

Background on related concepts: setpgrp historically creates a new process group for the calling process in some BSD-derived environments. In POSIX, the recommended interface is setpgid(pid, pgid), which returns 0 on success or -1 on error with errno set. Linux and other UNIX-like systems commonly provide setpgid and may offer compatibility wrappers, including non-standard names in certain projects.

Portability and guidance: For portable code, prefer POSIX-compliant interfaces such as setpgid. If you must work with setpgrpvoid, inspect its prototype and implementation to understand whether it returns a value, which arguments it takes, and how it reports errors. Treat it as environment-specific and do not rely on it for cross-platform behavior.

See also: setpgid, setpgrp, getpgrp, getpgid.