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From: guy@Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: open file range
Message-ID: <8357@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 20-Jun-87 15:45:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.8357
Posted: Sat Jun 20 15:45:02 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Jun-87 06:45:55 EDT
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Reply-To: guy@Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
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Approved: jsq@sally.utexas.edu (Moderator, John Quarterman)

From: guy@Sun.COM (Guy Harris)

> ...it would mean that things like
> 	fd = open(some-random-filename,something);
> 	do-something-bizarre-with-fd;
> 	close(fd);
> will do a "close(-1)" if the open happened to fail for some reason or other,
> which is harmless at the moment (just returns -1, errno=EBADF), but would be
> a bit tragic with this new semantics!
> Yes, I know this isn't a problem if everyone always checks the return-value
> from open(), creat(), etc..., but lots of programs aren't that pessimistic!

Programs that are not that pessimistic are broken.  I see no reason
to reject this proposal out of hand merely because it would expose
bugs in programs such as these; indeed, the fact that it exposes
these bugs might be an excellent reason to do it - it is very
aggravating to deal with programs that exhibit this sort of unwarranted
optimism, as they do not give very good error indications when this
optimism is unwarranted (if they bother giving one at all!).


Volume-Number: Volume 11, Number 75