11.31.3 Writing to the Event Log

To write a message to the event log, you must perform the following steps:

• Assign the error message you wish to write to the log to a variable of type char * and use the variable name as the argument to the call.
• Specify the literal text of the message within double quotes, as the argument to the userlog(3c) call, as shown in the following example:

  .
  .
  /* Open the database to be accessed by the transactions.*/
  if(tpopen() == -1) {
        userlog("tpsvrinit: Cannot open database %s, tpstrerror(tperrno)");
        return(-1);
  }
  .
  .
  .

In this example, the message is sent to the central event log if tpopen(3c) returns -1.

The userlog(3c) signature is similar to that of the UNIX System printf(3S) function. The format portion of both functions can contain literal strings and/or conversion specifications for a variable number of arguments.