Re: /usr/lib/apt/methods/http - close(-1)
On 29 Jan 1999, Stephen Zander wrote:
> >>>>> "Scott" == Scott K Ellis <storm@stormcrow.org> writes:
>
> Scott> On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Russell Coker wrote:
> >> What is a close(-1) supposed to do? The http program does one
> >> and I'm curious as to why...
>
> Scott> IIRC, close(-1) closes all open file handles. I'm not
> Scott> certain exactly wher this is documented though.
>
> Actually, it shouldn't do anything. What's most likely is the source
> has multiple code paths after the opening of some file descriptor &
> rather than do error checking in each code path, the programmer
> elected to to close the file descriptor just prior to exiting that
> block of code. When the open fails for hatever reason, the return
> code from open/socket/whatever is -1.
>
> IOW, close (-1) is an ignorable non-op (unless, of course, you were
> trying to get to the previous value of errno :))
Okay, so I didn't recall correctly :)
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