Question: Is there a way to get the list of all dynamic libraries needed by a given elf through API?

[Yuri]

I want to get the same information that 'ldd <elf-file>' returns, but 
from a C/C++ program without launching external processes.

It is possible to find the list of elf's shared library dependencies 
using libelf. But I couldn't find how to map library names to full 
library paths.


ldd(1) sets a certain environment variable, forks and calls execl(3), 
and the "ld.so magic" does the rest.


Obviously, if one needs to do the same from their own C program, forking 
is a much less attractive option compared to the API way.


Is there an API to find such mappings? If no, why doesn't it exist?


Thank you,

Yuri