🚀 go-pugleaf

From: simon@its63b.ed.ac.uk (Simon Brown)

In article <8271@ut-sally.UUCP> Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn@BRL.ARPA> writes:
>From: Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn@BRL.ARPA>
>
>I submitted a proposal to X3J11 that fflush((FILE*)NULL) would
>flush ALL output buffers, since there is no other good way to
>accomplish that.  It seems that close(-1) might be a similar
>solution for POSIX.  (Since nobody is supposed to be doing this
>currently, it is available for assigning new semantics to.)
>

Arghhh, no! Don't do that! Ok, it might seem a truly wonderful idea, but
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!

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Volume-Number: Volume 11, Number 74