Messages in this thread | ![/](/images/icornerl.gif) | | Date | Thu, 31 Jul 2003 15:14:37 -0400 (EDT) | From | "Richard B. Johnson" <> | Subject | RE: incompatible open modes |
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On Thu, 31 Jul 2003, Ata, John wrote:
> Hi Andries, > > If that's what's been decided... I presume for backwards compatability, > but it does seem rather odd though. After all, it seems like O_RDONLY > is supposed to safeguard someone from accidently overwriting a file. > Otherwise why not automatically open everything read/write? Going down > the same path, what's next: automatically write enabling a file which > has been openend for O_RDONLY the next time someone performs a write > operation on it? ;-) > > Take care, > John
Historically, the word "undefined" has become synonymous with "worst possible thing" under Unix. If some operation is "undefined" the implementor is free to low-level format your hard disk.
This is not a good thing. For instance, the MS-DOS 'open' has defaults that are not harmful. Not so with Unix. There are no defaults! You must be explicit. You can even create a file you can't delete if you don't set the permissions correctly when opening O_CREAT. Note you can even create a file called "*" and "*.*". So, under Unix you gotta be careful. Like somebody's .sig said; "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself!"
Cheers, Dick Johnson Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips). Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.
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