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Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 01:52:43 +0200
From: Edgar Toernig <froese@gmx.de>
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To: Alexander Viro <viro@math.psu.edu>
CC: Ben LaHaise <bcrl@redhat.com>, torvalds@transmeta.com,
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Subject: Re: Why side-effects on open(2) are evil. (was Re: [RFD 
 w/info-PATCH]device arguments from lookup)
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nitpicking: a system call without side effects would be pretty useless.

Alexander Viro wrote:
> A lot of stuff relies on the fact that close(open(foo, O_RDONLY)) is a
> no-op. Breaking that assumption is a Bad Thing(tm).

That assumption is totally bogus.  Even for regular files you have side
effects (atime); for anything else they're unpredictable.

Ciao, ET.