DESCRIPTION
The file name specified by path is opened for reading and/or writing as specified by the argument flags and the file descriptor returned to the calling process. The flags argument may indicate the file is to be created if it does not exist (by specifying the O_CREAT flag). In this case open requires a third argument "mode_t mode", and the file is created with mode mode as described in chmod(2) and modified by the process’ umask value (see umask(2)). The flags specified are formed by or ’ing the following values
O_RDONLY open for reading only
O_WRONLY open for writing only
O_RDWRopen for reading and writing
O_NONBLOCK do not block on open
O_APPEND append on each write
O_CREAT create file if it does not exist
O_TRUNC truncate size to 0
O_EXCLerror if create and file exists
O_SHLOCK atomically obtain a shared lock
O_EXLOCK atomically obtain an exclusive lock
O_DIRECT eliminate or reduce cache effects
O_FSYNC synchronous writes
O_NOFOLLOW do not follow symlinks
Opening a file with O_APPEND set causes each write on the file to be appended to the end. If O_TRUNC is specified and the file exists, the file is truncated to zero length. If O_EXCL is set with O_CREAT and the file already exists, open returns an error. This may be used to implement a simple exclusive access locking mechanism. If O_EXCL is set and the last component of the pathname is a symbolic link, open will fail even if the symbolic link points to a non-existent name. If the O_NONBLOCK flag is specified and the open system call would result in the process being blocked for some reason (e.g., waiting for carrier on a dialup line), open returns immediately. The descriptor remains in non-blocking mode for subsequent operations.
If O_FSYNC is used in the mask, all writes will immediately be written to disk, the kernel will not cache written data and all writes on the descriptor will not return until the data to be written completes.
If O_NOFOLLOW is used in the mask and the target file passed to open is a symbolic link then the open will fail.
When opening a file, a lock with flock(2) semantics can be obtained by setting O_SHLOCK for a shared lock, or O_EXLOCK for an exclusive lock. If creating a file with O_CREAT, the request for the lock will never fail (provided that the underlying file system supports locking).
O_DIRECT may be used to minimize or eliminate the cache effects of reading and writing. The system will attempt to avoid caching the data you read or write. If it cannot avoid caching the data, it will minimize the impact the data has on the cache. Use of this flag can drastically reduce performance if not used with care.
If successful, open returns a non-negative integer, termed a file descriptor. It returns -1 on failure. The file pointer used to mark the current position within the file is set to the beginning of the file.
When a new file is created it is given the group of the directory which contains it.
The new descriptor is set to remain open across execve(2) system calls; see close(2) and fcntl(2).
The system imposes a limit on the number of file descriptors open simultaneously by one process. The getdtablesize(2) system call returns the current system limit.
RETURN VALUES
If successful, open returns a non-negative integer, termed a file descriptor. It returns -1 on failure, and sets errno to indicate the error.
ERRORS
The named file is opened unless:
