xref: /freebsd/lib/libutil/flopen.3 (revision 9a14aa017b21c292740c00ee098195cd46642730)
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2.\" Copyright (c) 2007 Dag-Erling Coïdan Smørgrav
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26.\" $FreeBSD$
27.\"
28.Dd June 6, 2009
29.Dt FLOPEN 3
30.Os
31.Sh NAME
32.Nm flopen
33.Nd "Reliably open and lock a file"
34.Sh LIBRARY
35.Lb libutil
36.Sh SYNOPSIS
37.In sys/fcntl.h
38.In libutil.h
39.Ft int
40.Fn flopen "const char *path" "int flags"
41.Ft int
42.Fn flopen "const char *path" "int flags" "mode_t mode"
43.Sh DESCRIPTION
44The
45.Fn flopen
46function opens or creates a file and acquires an exclusive lock on it.
47It is essentially equivalent with calling
48.Fn open
49with the same parameters followed by
50.Fn flock
51with an
52.Va operation
53argument of
54.Dv LOCK_EX ,
55except that
56.Fn flopen
57will attempt to detect and handle races that may occur between opening
58/ creating the file and locking it.
59Thus, it is well suited for opening lock files, PID files, spool
60files, mailboxes and other kinds of files which are used for
61synchronization between processes.
62.Pp
63If
64.Va flags
65includes
66.Dv O_NONBLOCK
67and the file is already locked,
68.Fn flopen
69will fail and set
70.Va errno
71to
72.Dv EWOULDBLOCK .
73.Pp
74As with
75.Fn open ,
76the additional
77.Va mode
78argument is required if
79.Va flags
80includes
81.Dv O_CREAT .
82.Sh RETURN VALUES
83If successful,
84.Fn flopen
85returns a valid file descriptor.
86Otherwise, it returns -1, and sets
87.Va errno
88as described in
89.Xr flock 2
90and
91.Xr open 2 .
92.Sh SEE ALSO
93.Xr errno 2 ,
94.Xr flock 2 ,
95.Xr open 2
96.Sh AUTHORS
97.An -nosplit
98The
99.Nm
100function and this manual page were written by
101.An Dag-Erling Sm\(/orgrav Aq des@FreeBSD.org .
102