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From: phil.rice%rand-relay@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: fdopen() problem in stdio
Message-ID: <13400@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 6-Nov-83 16:11:03 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.13400
Posted: Sun Nov  6 16:11:03 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 8-Nov-83 22:21:55 EST
Lines: 23

From:  William LeFebvre <phil.rice@rand-relay>

   "The problem is that after <N> calls to the routine, fdopen() returns NULL
    because it runs out of FILE pointers (there is a static array of them in
    stdio).  I don't want to use fclose(), that would close the file
    descriptor.
    
    Anyone know a way to release a FILE pointer without closing the file
    itself?  Poking into the structure is not a solution I would like to
    consider."

Rather than doing the fdopen on the original file descriptor (with
fdopen(fd, ...)), you could do a fdopen(dup(fd), ...).  Then you can
call fclose() and not worry about the original file descriptor getting
closed.  Offhand, I think that this is the only way, short of mucking
around in _iob[], that you can do what you want to do.  The major
drawback to this scheme, of course, is that you can run out of file
descriptors (instead of FILE *'s) if you do this alot.

                                William LeFebvre
                                ARPANet: phil.rice@Rand-Relay
                                CSNet:   phil@rice
                                USENet:  ...!lbl-csam!rice!phil