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From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: fopen ( ..., "a" ) --- how does the "a" work?
Message-ID: <11776@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 8 Dec 89 02:52:07 GMT
References: <3250@hub.UUCP> <895@hsi86.hsi.UUCP> <21152@mimsy.umd.edu> <1890@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 8

In article <1890@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) writes:
-  In retrospect I think that one more key letter would have been useful
-in pANS. The use of "a" to mean 'always append, never rewrite' is a
-useful one, but often "a" is used when what is meant is to 'open the
-existing file if there is one, otherwise create one.'

If so, that's simply a user error.  That is not and never has been
the meaning of the "a" fopen() mode.