Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: File descriptors open info
Message-ID: <15346@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 27 Feb 91 21:21:40 GMT
References: <1991Feb26.213145.26540@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 11

In article <1991Feb26.213145.26540@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> hurf@theory.tn.cornell.edu (Hurf Sheldon) writes:
>	is there a Unix system call (or some other method) for
>	finding out how many file descriptors a process has
>	open?

This is another one of the "why would you possibly care?" category
of questions.  There is no direct support for this, but something
of possible use would be to see what value dup(0) returns (then
close() the duplicate FD).  You will get the lowest available FD
number, which may be sufficient.  By elaborating on this idea you
could also count the FDs initially in use, but why would you want to?