.\"- .\" Copyright (c) 2007 Dag-Erling Coïdan Smørgrav .\" All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" $FreeBSD$ .\" .Dd July 28, 2017 .Dt FLOPEN 3bsd .Os .Sh NAME .Nm flopen , .Nm flopenat .Nd "Reliably open and lock a file" .Sh LIBRARY .ds str-Lb-libbsd Utility functions from BSD systems (libbsd, \-lbsd) .Lb libbsd .Sh SYNOPSIS .In sys/fcntl.h .In libutil.h (See .Xr libbsd 7 for include usage.) .Ft int .Fn flopen "const char *path" "int flags" .Ft int .Fn flopen "const char *path" "int flags" "mode_t mode" .Ft int .Fn flopenat "int fd" "const char *path" "int flags" .Ft int .Fn flopenat "int fd" "const char *path" "int flags" "mode_t mode" .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Fn flopen function opens or creates a file and acquires an exclusive lock on it. It is essentially equivalent with calling .Fn open with the same parameters followed by .Fn flock with an .Fa operation argument of .Dv LOCK_EX , except that .Fn flopen will attempt to detect and handle races that may occur between opening / creating the file and locking it. Thus, it is well suited for opening lock files, PID files, spool files, mailboxes and other kinds of files which are used for synchronization between processes. .Pp If .Fa flags includes .Dv O_NONBLOCK and the file is already locked, .Fn flopen will fail and set .Va errno to .Dv EWOULDBLOCK . .Pp As with .Fn open , the additional .Fa mode argument is required if .Fa flags includes .Dv O_CREAT . .Pp The .Fn flopenat function is equivalent to the .Fn flopen function except in the case where the .Fa path specifies a relative path. In this case the file to be opened is determined relative to the directory associated with the file descriptor .Fa fd instead of the current working directory. If .Fn flopenat is passed the special value .Dv AT_FDCWD in the .Fa fd parameter, the current working directory is used and the behavior is identical to a call to .Fn flopen . .Sh RETURN VALUES If successful, .Fn flopen returns a valid file descriptor. Otherwise, it returns \-1, and sets .Va errno as described in .Xr flock 2 and .Xr open 2 . .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr errno 2 , .Xr flock 2 , .Xr open 2 .Sh AUTHORS .An -nosplit The .Nm function and this manual page were written by .An Dag-Erling Sm\(/orgrav Aq Mt des@FreeBSD.org .