xref: /freebsd/lib/libutil/flopen.3 (revision 783d3ff6d7fae619db8a7990b8a6387de0c677b5)
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2.\" Copyright (c) 2007 Dag-Erling Smørgrav
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26.Dd July 28, 2017
27.Dt FLOPEN 3
28.Os
29.Sh NAME
30.Nm flopen ,
31.Nm flopenat
32.Nd "Reliably open and lock a file"
33.Sh LIBRARY
34.Lb libutil
35.Sh SYNOPSIS
36.In sys/fcntl.h
37.In libutil.h
38.Ft int
39.Fn flopen "const char *path" "int flags"
40.Ft int
41.Fn flopen "const char *path" "int flags" "mode_t mode"
42.Ft int
43.Fn flopenat "int fd" "const char *path" "int flags"
44.Ft int
45.Fn flopenat "int fd" "const char *path" "int flags" "mode_t mode"
46.Sh DESCRIPTION
47The
48.Fn flopen
49function opens or creates a file and acquires an exclusive lock on it.
50It is essentially equivalent with calling
51.Fn open
52with the same parameters followed by
53.Fn flock
54with an
55.Fa operation
56argument of
57.Dv LOCK_EX ,
58except that
59.Fn flopen
60will attempt to detect and handle races that may occur between opening
61/ creating the file and locking it.
62Thus, it is well suited for opening lock files, PID files, spool
63files, mailboxes and other kinds of files which are used for
64synchronization between processes.
65.Pp
66If
67.Fa flags
68includes
69.Dv O_NONBLOCK
70and the file is already locked,
71.Fn flopen
72will fail and set
73.Va errno
74to
75.Dv EWOULDBLOCK .
76.Pp
77As with
78.Fn open ,
79the additional
80.Fa mode
81argument is required if
82.Fa flags
83includes
84.Dv O_CREAT .
85.Pp
86The
87.Fn flopenat
88function is equivalent to the
89.Fn flopen
90function except in the case where the
91.Fa path
92specifies a relative path.
93In this case the file to be opened is determined relative to the directory
94associated with the file descriptor
95.Fa fd
96instead of the current working directory.
97If
98.Fn flopenat
99is passed the special value
100.Dv AT_FDCWD
101in the
102.Fa fd
103parameter, the current working directory is used
104and the behavior is identical to a call to
105.Fn flopen .
106.Sh RETURN VALUES
107If successful,
108.Fn flopen
109returns a valid file descriptor.
110Otherwise, it returns -1, and sets
111.Va errno
112as described in
113.Xr flock 2
114and
115.Xr open 2 .
116.Sh SEE ALSO
117.Xr errno 2 ,
118.Xr flock 2 ,
119.Xr open 2
120.Sh AUTHORS
121.An -nosplit
122The
123.Nm
124function and this manual page were written by
125.An Dag-Erling Sm\(/orgrav Aq Mt des@FreeBSD.org .
126