Re:POSIX close(2) is broken
by cperciva on Saturday December 17, 2011 @04:14AM
(#3363872)
Given that the standard states
I think it's safe to say that fclose is allowed to fail with no defined way to clean up the mess.
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Yeah, I was just looking at that after I posted my initial comment, and I think I agree with you. That's the only reading I can see that doesn't create more questions than it answers.
I think in this case, Occam's razor says "this part of the standard is not fully thought through".
this part of the standard is not fully thought through
I agree... and this terrifies me, given that EINTR is mentioned in the man page for close(2) back in BSD Net/2, over 20 years ago.
this terrifies me
Now think about all the libraries and application that end up calling close() and fclose().
Add a few abstraction layers and good luck figuring out if closing a file is safe in a multithreaded Java app.