Trojan Horses

[Richard Tobin]

In article <BZS.90Oct17215707 at world.std.com> bzs at world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>>I wonder, incidentally, why does close() return something?  

>Trying to close a closed file descriptor will cause -1 to be returned
>and errno set to EBADF. Close can also be interrupted (EINTR), 

And with at least one network file system, errors such as "disk full"
may not be reported until the file is closed, due to client buffering.
Failure to check for this leads to editors truncating files and other 
such unpleasantness.

-- Richard
-- 
Richard Tobin,                       JANET: R.Tobin at uk.ac.ed             
AI Applications Institute,           ARPA:  R.Tobin%uk.ac.ed at nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Edinburgh University.                UUCP:  ...!ukc!ed.ac.uk!R.Tobin