Closes the file associated with a file descriptor.
#include <unistd.h>
int close ( FileDescriptor) int FileDescriptor;
The close subroutine closes the file associated with the FileDescriptor parameter. If Network File System (NFS) is installed on your system, this file can reside on another node.
All file regions associated with the file specified by the FileDescriptor parameter that this process has previously locked with the lockf or fcntl subroutine are unlocked. This occurs even if the process still has the file open by another file descriptor.
If the FileDescriptor parameter resulted from an open subroutine that specified O_DEFER, and this was the last file descriptor, all changes made to the file since the last fsync subroutine are discarded.
If the FileDescriptor parameter is associated with a mapped file, it is unmapped. The shmat subroutine provides more information about mapped files.
The close subroutine attempts to cancel outstanding asynchronous I/O requests on this file descriptor. If the asynchronous I/O requests cannot be canceled, the application is blocked until the requests have completed.
When all file descriptors associated with a pipe or FIFO special file have been closed, any data remaining in the pipe or FIFO is discarded. If the link count of the file is 0 when all file descriptors associated with the file have been closed, the space occupied by the file is freed, and the file is no longer accessible.
Note: If the FileDescriptor parameter refers to a device and the close subroutine actually results in a device close, and the device close routine returns an error, the error is returned to the application. However, the FileDescriptor parameter is considered closed and it may not be used in any subsequent calls.All open file descriptors are closed when a process exits. In addition, file descriptors may be closed during the exec subroutine if the close-on-exec flag has been set for that file descriptor.
| FileDescriptor | Specifies a valid open file descriptor. |
Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned. Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned and the errno global variable is set to identify the error. If the close subroutine is interrupted by a signal that is caught, it returns a value of -1, the errno global variable is set to EINTR and the state of the FileDescriptor parameter is closed.
The close subroutine is unsuccessful if the following is true:
| EBADF | The FileDescriptor parameter does not specify a valid open file descriptor. |
| EINTR | Specifies that the close subroutine was interrupted by a signal. |
The close subroutine may also be unsuccessful if the file being closed is NFS-mounted and the server is down under the following conditions:
The close subroutine may also be unsuccessful if NFS is installed and the following is true:
| ETIMEDOUT | The connection timed out. |
This subroutine is part of Base Operating System (BOS) Runtime.
The exec subroutines, fcntl subroutine, ioctl subroutine, lockfx subroutine, open, openx, or creat subroutine, pipe subroutine, socket subroutine.
The Input and Output Handling Programmer's Overview in AIX Version 4.3 General Programming Concepts: Writing and Debugging Programs.