Xref: utzoo comp.unix.questions:24400 alt.sources.d:728
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!star.cs.vu.nl!maart
From: maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,alt.sources.d
Subject: Re: how to compare file modification time  (whole dir tree?)
Message-ID: <7253@star.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 7 Aug 90 14:32:17 GMT
References: <1990Jul27.153223.12416@chinet.chi.il.us> <1446@chinacat.Unicom.COM> <1990Aug3.155651.12006@sq.sq.com> <303@risky.Convergent.COM>
Sender: news@cs.vu.nl
Reply-To: maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath)
Organization: VU Dept. of Computer Science, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Lines: 13

In article <303@risky.Convergent.COM>,
	chrisb@risky.Convergent.COM (Chris Bertin) writes:
)...
)To go back to the original script, it really doesn't need to open /dev/null.
)Most people do that when they want to discard output, but why not close
)the apropriate file descriptor?

Because in general it's a bad idea _not_ to provide a program with _valid_
stdin, stdout and stderr files.  The program e.g. might abort after
discovering a write() to file descriptor 1 failed...
--
   "UNIX was never designed to keep people from doing stupid things, because
    that policy would also keep them from doing clever things."  (Doug Gwyn)