Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!psuvax1!wuarchive!udel!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: access()
Message-ID: <15103@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 6 Feb 91 19:36:30 GMT
References: <1991Feb1.125713.14842@dce.ie> <15051@smoke.brl.mil> <3345@unisoft.UUCP>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 8

In article <3345@unisoft.UUCP> greywolf@unisoft.UUCP (The Grey Wolf) writes:
>Sometimes, we only want to verify that a file exists, in which case it
>is more tended to use access() for this.

Yeah, well often it doesn't work, because the wrong permissions are
checked for the path components.  The safest way to test for file
existence (on UNIX) is to stat() the presumed pathname and see if
it succeeds.