DESCRIPTION
The mktemp utility takes each of the given file name templates and overwrites a portion of it to create a file name. This file name is unique and suitable for use by the application. The template may be any file name with some number of ‘X s’ appended to it, for example /tmp/temp.XXXX. The trailing ‘X s’ are replaced with the current process number and/or a unique letter combination. The number of unique file names mktemp can return depends on the number of ‘X s’ provided; six ‘X s’ will result in mktemp testing roughly 26 ** 6 combinations. If mktemp can successfully generate a unique file name, the file is created with mode 0600 (unless the -u flag is given) and the filename is printed to standard output.
If the -t prefix option is given, mktemp will generate a template string based on the prefix and the TMPDIR environment variable if set. The default location if TMPDIR is not set is /tmp. Care should be taken to ensure that it is appropriate to use an environment variable potentially supplied by the user.
Any number of temporary files may be created in a single invocation, including one based on the internal template resulting from the -t flag.
The mktemp utility is provided to allow shell scripts to safely use temporary files. Traditionally, many shell scripts take the name of the program with the pid as a suffix and use that as a temporary file name. This kind of naming scheme is predictable and the race condition it creates is easy for an attacker to win. A safer, though still inferior, approach is to make a temporary directory using the same naming scheme. While this does allow one to guarantee that a temporary file will not be subverted, it still allows a simple denial of service attack. For these reasons it is suggested that mktemp be used instead.
OPTIONS
The available options are as follows:
