xref: /freebsd/lib/libutil/flopen.3 (revision cc68614da8232d8baaca0ae0d0dd8f890f06623e)
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2.\" Copyright (c) 2007 Dag-Erling Coïdan Smørgrav
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26.\" $FreeBSD$
27.\"
28.Dd July 28, 2017
29.Dt FLOPEN 3
30.Os
31.Sh NAME
32.Nm flopen ,
33.Nm flopenat
34.Nd "Reliably open and lock a file"
35.Sh LIBRARY
36.Lb libutil
37.Sh SYNOPSIS
38.In sys/fcntl.h
39.In libutil.h
40.Ft int
41.Fn flopen "const char *path" "int flags"
42.Ft int
43.Fn flopen "const char *path" "int flags" "mode_t mode"
44.Ft int
45.Fn flopenat "int fd" "const char *path" "int flags"
46.Ft int
47.Fn flopenat "int fd" "const char *path" "int flags" "mode_t mode"
48.Sh DESCRIPTION
49The
50.Fn flopen
51function opens or creates a file and acquires an exclusive lock on it.
52It is essentially equivalent with calling
53.Fn open
54with the same parameters followed by
55.Fn flock
56with an
57.Fa operation
58argument of
59.Dv LOCK_EX ,
60except that
61.Fn flopen
62will attempt to detect and handle races that may occur between opening
63/ creating the file and locking it.
64Thus, it is well suited for opening lock files, PID files, spool
65files, mailboxes and other kinds of files which are used for
66synchronization between processes.
67.Pp
68If
69.Fa flags
70includes
71.Dv O_NONBLOCK
72and the file is already locked,
73.Fn flopen
74will fail and set
75.Va errno
76to
77.Dv EWOULDBLOCK .
78.Pp
79As with
80.Fn open ,
81the additional
82.Fa mode
83argument is required if
84.Fa flags
85includes
86.Dv O_CREAT .
87.Pp
88The
89.Fn flopenat
90function is equivalent to the
91.Fn flopen
92function except in the case where the
93.Fa path
94specifies a relative path.
95In this case the file to be opened is determined relative to the directory
96associated with the file descriptor
97.Fa fd
98instead of the current working directory.
99If
100.Fn flopenat
101is passed the special value
102.Dv AT_FDCWD
103in the
104.Fa fd
105parameter, the current working directory is used
106and the behavior is identical to a call to
107.Fn flopen .
108.Sh RETURN VALUES
109If successful,
110.Fn flopen
111returns a valid file descriptor.
112Otherwise, it returns -1, and sets
113.Va errno
114as described in
115.Xr flock 2
116and
117.Xr open 2 .
118.Sh SEE ALSO
119.Xr errno 2 ,
120.Xr flock 2 ,
121.Xr open 2
122.Sh AUTHORS
123.An -nosplit
124The
125.Nm
126function and this manual page were written by
127.An Dag-Erling Sm\(/orgrav Aq Mt des@FreeBSD.org .
128