close
Hurricane Electric Internet Services
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.
If fd is the last copy of a particular file descriptor the
resources associated with it are freed; for example any
locks held are removed and if the descriptor was the last
reference to a file which has been removed using unlink
the file is deleted.
RETURN VALUE
close returns zero on success, or -1 if an error occurred.
ERRORS
EBADF fd isn't a valid open file descriptor.
CONFORMING TO
SVID, AT&T, POSIX, X/OPEN, BSD 4.3
NOTES
Not checking the return value of close is a common but
nevertheless serious programming error. File system
implementations which use techniques as ``write-behind''
to increase performance may lead to write(2) succeeding,
although the data has not been written yet. The error
status may be reported at a later write operation, but it
is guaranteed to be reported on closing the file. Not
checking the return value when closing the file may lead
to silent loss of data. This can especially be observed
with NFS and disk quotas.
SEE ALSO
open(2), fcntl(2), shutdown(2), unlink(2), fclose(3).
Hurricane Electric Internet Services
Copyright (C) 1998
Hurricane Electric.
All Rights Reserved.