- return a string describing the current GL connection
C SPECIFICATION
PARAMETERS
_param1 Specifies a symbolic constant, one of GL_VENDOR,
GL_RENDERER, GL_VERSION, or GL_EXTENSIONS.
DESCRIPTION
glGetString returns a pointer to a static string describ-
ing some aspect of the current GL connection. _param1 can
be one of the following:
GL_VENDOR Returns the company responsible for
this GL implementation. This name
does not change from release to
release.
GL_RENDERER Returns the name of the renderer.
This name is typically specific to a
particular configuration of a hardware
platform. It does not change from
release to release.
GL_VERSION Returns a version or release number.
GL_EXTENSIONS Returns a space-separated list of sup-
ported extensions to GL.
Because the GL does not include queries for the perfor-
mance characteristics of an implementation, some applica-
tions are written to recognize known platforms and modify
their GL usage based on known performance characteristics
of these platforms. Strings GL_VENDOR and GL_RENDERER
together uniquely specify a platform. They do not change
from release to release and should be used by platform-
recognition algorithms.
Some applications want to make use of features that are
not part of the standard GL. These features may be imple-
mented as extensions to the standard GL. The
GL_EXTENSIONS string is a space-separated list of sup-
ported GL extensions. (Extension names never contain a
space character.)
The GL_VERSION string begins with a version number. The
version number uses one of these forms:
major_number.minor_number
major_number.minor_number.release_number
Vendor-specific information may follow the version number.
ERRORS
GL_INVALID_ENUM is generated if _param1 is not an accepted
value.
GL_INVALID_OPERATION is generated if glGetString is exe-
cuted between the execution of glBegin and the correspond-
ing execution of glEnd.
1