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From: rk@unify.UUCP (Ron Kuris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: unlink safe before close?
Keywords: unlink before close
Message-ID: <755@unify.UUCP>
Date: 6 May 89 18:13:35 GMT
Reply-To: rk@unify.UUCP (Ron Kuris)
Distribution: na
Organization: Unify Corporation, Sacramento, CA, USA
Lines: 34

I heard from someone in our organization that the following code
was non-portable.  Does anyone know of some machines were it does
not work?  Obviously MS/DOS will fail (but who cares?).

The intent is to create a temporary file that noone else
can conflict with, and is automatically removed when the program
terminates (either normally or abnormally):

main()
{
    int fd;
    if ((fd = creat("/tmp/who-cares", 0600)) < 0)
	{
	/* failure code... */
	}
    unlink("/tmp/who-cares");
    /* initialize some-stuff and some-size here with whatever */
    write(fd, some-stuff, some-size);
    /* do whatever else you want with the fd: reads, writes, etc */
    .
    .
    .
    /* finally just exit which closes and cleans up everything */
    exit(0);
}

Note that if a core occurs somewhere in the . . . area, the file will
automatically be erased.  I think this is pretty peachy :-).

Comments?
-- 
Ron Kuris		(916) 920-9092
rk@unify.UUCP
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