On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 09:03:42PM -0800, Joshua ben Jore wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 4:29 PM, Michael G Schwern <schw...@pobox.com> wrote:
> > A little experimentation with a small disk image shows that close() will
> > error if there's no disk left. No need to check every print. And a close()
>
> You have to check every print. Most prints will just extend the buffer
> but some prints will flush the buffer and return a real
> success/failure.
But when print() or flush() fails, doesn't that put the filehandle into a
state where close() will always fail?
>From the perldocs for close():
Closes the file or pipe associated with the file handle, flushes the IO
buffers, and closes the system file descriptor. Returns true if those
operations have succeeded and if no error was reported by any PerlIO
layer.
If flushing the IO buffers fails once because the disk is full, I don't expect
that it would succeed in the future, right?
I've been using the technique of skipping checks on print() but checking
close() for a while now. Maybe I've been lucky, but it seems to have been
pretty successful at detecting disk-full conditions. The only downside is
that you don't know as soon as it happens -- you only know when you close() --
but depending on how your program is structured, that's usually not a problem.
Marvin Humphrey
