close(S)

close -- close a file descriptor

Syntax

cc . . . -lc

#include <unistd.h>

int close (int fildes);

Description

The close function breaks the connection between a file descriptor and an open file, and frees the file descriptor for use with some other file.

The fildes argument is a file descriptor obtained from a creat, open, dup, fcntl, or pipe system call. The close system call closes the file descriptor indicated by fildes. All outstanding record locks owned by the process (on the file indicated by fildes) are removed.

If a STREAMS file is closed, and the calling process had previously registered to receive a SIGPOLL signal (see sigaction(S) and sigset(S)) for events associated with that file, the calling process is unregistered for events associated with the file. The last close for a stream causes the stream associated with fildes to be dismantled. If O_NONBLOCK is not set and there have been no signals posted for the stream, close waits up to 15 seconds, for each module and driver, for any output to drain before dismantling the stream. If the O_NONBLOCK flag is set or if there are any pending signals, close does not wait for output to drain and dismantles the stream immediately.

The named file is closed unless one or more of the following is true:

[EBADF]: The fildes argument is not a valid open file descriptor.
[EINTR]: A signal was caught during the close system call.
[ENOLINK]: fildes is on a remote machine and the link to that machine is no longer active.

Diagnostics

Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned. Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned, and errno is set to indicate the error.

Example

The function is typically used to close files that are no longer needed. For example, the following program fragment closes the standard input if the argument count is greater than 1.

   int fd;
   
   if (argc >1)
           close(0);

Note that all open files in a program are closed when a program terminates normally or when the exit function is called, so no explicit call to close is required.

Standards conformance

close is conformant with: