Re: fflush & close behavior not well-defined

[Andrew J. Schorr]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 11:03:22AM -0500, Neil R. Ormos wrote:
> Is there a way to expose a handle or other
> unambiguous ID corresponding to the most recent
> operation on a file, pipe, or coprocess?

Anything is possible. Behind the scenes, each open file/pipe/coprocess is
represented by a structure, so of course the address of the structure is a
unique identifier. Or one could assign an arbitrary identifier. That's not
hard. Are you suggesting to stick this value somewhere in PROCINFO or some
other global variable every time an I/O occurs? That seems a bit heavyweight
for something nobody actually cares about.

> Then, a user who needs a non-ambiguous call to
> close() or fflush() could pass the handle instead
> of, or in addition to, the current filename
> argument?

I don't see why this is better than enhancing the close & fflush functions to
give them the info they need to find the correct file, but maybe if you flesh
out your idea with an example, I'll understand better.

Regards,
Andy