Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!brl-adm!adm!drears@ardec.arpa
From: drears@ardec.arpa (Dennis G. Rears (FSAC))
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re:  Writing to A NON-Existing File in C
Message-ID: <12895@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: 9 Apr 88 17:22:49 GMT
Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA
Lines: 55


  ok. ok.  After over 20 messages I admit I f*cked up on my posting
and program.  The errors pointed out were:

	1) comment should have ended in "*/" not "*?"
	2) The declaration #define NULL  "/dev/null/"
	should not have used NUll and the / after null was wrong
	3) I use the word FILE instead of FILENAME in my stat(2) call
	
Next time I will not send a program while sleeping.  Please no more
messages about this.


Here is a corrected version of it:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#define FILENAME  "/usr/foobar"      /*  not a trademark of AT&T */
#define DEVNULL	  "dev/null"
main(a,b)
int a;
char *b[];
{
	struct stat buf;
	FILE	*fopen(), *fp;


	if(stat(FILENAME,&buf)){

		if ( (fp=fopen(DEVNULL,"a")) == NULL ) { 
			/* or use perror() */
			(void)fprintf (stderr, 
			"%s: Can not open /dev/null file\n",b[0]);
			exit(-1);
		}
	}
	else
		if ( (fp=fopen(FILENAME,"a")) == NULL ) { 
			(void)fprintf (stderr, 
			"%s: Can not open %sfile\n",b[0],FILENAME);
			exit(-1);

		}
/*   go on writing to filepointer fp */
}
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