Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari.oz.au!goanna!ok
From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: file descriptor vs file handle
Message-ID: <4846@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Date: 28 Feb 91 02:34:18 GMT
References: <90361.145855COS99291@ufrj.bitnet> <1021@uncw.UUCP> <4842@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 18

In article <4842@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>, ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
> > cwong@charlie.coyote.trw.com (Chun Wong) writes:
> > >Can someone distinguish the differences between a file descriptor and
> > >a file handle?  I know that creat returns a file handle whereas fopen
> > >returns a file descriptor.  What's the difference?  Are they interchangeable?

I explained file-descriptor, path-name, and stdio-stream.  I forgot to say
anything about "handle".  OS/2 documentation uses the word "handle" to
mean exactly the same thing as UNIX means by "file descriptor".  For
example, the thing DosOpen() returns via its second argument is a "handle",
which is a 16-bit integer, just as open() in UNIX returns an integer.
In fact, just as standard input, output, and error have file descriptors
0, 1, and 2 in UNIX, so STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR  are 0, 1, and 2 in OS/2.

"Handle" is used in other environments to mean a pointer to a pointer.
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