/tmp versus temporary file types

[Peter da Silva]

> 
> Just a design note: On our IBM system files are named on CLOSE rather
> than open...
> ...
> besides tmp files it just generally guarantees that programs which
> for some reason, um, er, abend, and don't want things left around
> can have that...

But the usual case where you *do* want to keep the file around dies
horribly if you do this. Remember that one of the *nice* features of
UNIX files is that they are always "closed" from the outside. You can
always look at the output of a long-running background job without
bending over backwards...

	% nroff -ms huge_file > huge_file.out &
	% ...wait a while, maybe doing other things...
	% tail huge_file.out
	...whatever the output is, so long as it's reasonable...
	% ...and repeat...