Question

sys_errlist is indexed by errno and contains the appropriate error message. Where can I see the contents of this list?

Answer 1

Probably in some system header file included somehow by <errno.h>. If you want to print its full content you can easily do it with a small program:

#include <errno.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    for(int i=0; i<sys_nerr; i++)
        printf("sys_errlist[%d] = \"%s\"\n", i, sys_errlist[i]);
    return 0;
}

(sys_nerr is defined as the number of entries in sys_errlist)

Still, keep in mind that, according to my manpages, perror or strerror should be preferred since

new error values may not have been added to sys_errlist[].