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close a file descriptor

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1. close.2.man

Manpage of CLOSE

CLOSE

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (2)
Updated: 2007-12-28
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

close - close a file descriptor

SYNOPSIS

#include <unistd.h>

int close(int fd);

DESCRIPTION

close() closes a file descriptor, so that it no longer refers to any file and may be reused. Any record locks (see fcntl(2)) held on the file it was associated with, and owned by the process, are removed (regardless of the file descriptor that was used to obtain the lock).

If fd is the last file descriptor referring to the underlying open file description (see open(2)), the resources associated with the open file description are freed; if the descriptor was the last reference to a file which has been removed using unlink(2) the file is deleted.

RETURN VALUE

close() returns zero on success. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS

EBADF: fd isn't a valid open file descriptor.
EINTR: The close() call was interrupted by a signal.
EIO: An I/O error occurred.

CONFORMING TO

SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.

NOTES

Not checking the return value of close() is a common but nevertheless serious programming error. It is quite possible that errors on a previous write(2) operation are first reported at the final close(). Not checking the return value when closing the file may lead to silent loss of data. This can especially be observed with NFS and with disk quota.

A successful close does not guarantee that the data has been successfully saved to disk, as the kernel defers writes. It is not common for a filesystem to flush the buffers when the stream is closed. If you need to be sure that the data is physically stored use fsync(2). (It will depend on the disk hardware at this point.)

It is probably unwise to close file descriptors while they may be in use by system calls in other threads in the same process. Since a file descriptor may be re-used, there are some obscure race conditions that may cause unintended side effects.

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 2.78 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

This document was created by man2html using the manual pages.
Time: 00:20:29 GMT, November 20, 2008

2. close.9.man

Manpage of close

close

Section: Tcl Built-In Commands (n)
Updated: 7.5
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

close - Close an open channel.

SYNOPSIS

close channelId

DESCRIPTION

Closes the channel given by channelId.

ChannelId must be an identifier for an open channel such as a Tcl standard channel (stdin, stdout, or stderr), the return value from an invocation of open or socket, or the result of a channel creation command provided by a Tcl extension.

All buffered output is flushed to the channel's output device, any buffered input is discarded, the underlying file or device is closed, and channelId becomes unavailable for use.

If the channel is blocking, the command does not return until all output is flushed. If the channel is nonblocking and there is unflushed output, the channel remains open and the command returns immediately; output will be flushed in the background and the channel will be closed when all the flushing is complete.

If channelId is a blocking channel for a command pipeline then close waits for the child processes to complete.

If the channel is shared between interpreters, then close makes channelId unavailable in the invoking interpreter but has no other effect until all of the sharing interpreters have closed the channel. When the last interpreter in which the channel is registered invokes close, the cleanup actions described above occur. See the interp command for a description of channel sharing.

Channels are automatically closed when an interpreter is destroyed and when the process exits. Channels are switched to blocking mode, to ensure that all output is correctly flushed before the process exits.

The command returns an empty string, and may generate an error if an error occurs while flushing output. If a command in a command pipeline created with open returns an error, close generates an error (similar to the exec command.)

EXAMPLE

This illustrates how you can use Tcl to ensure that files get closed even when errors happen by combining catch, close and return:


proc withOpenFile {filename channelVar script} {
    upvar 1 $channelVar chan
    set chan [open $filename]
    catch {
        uplevel 1 $script
    } result options
    close $chan
    return -options $options $result
}