The ISO/IEC 9899-1999 C standard function fopen() is typically used to open an existing file or create a new one. However, fopen() does not provide a mechanism to determine if an existing file has been opened or a new file has been created. This may lead to a program overwriting or accessing an unintended file.
Non-Compliant Example
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In this example, a file name is supplied to fopen() to create and open for writing. However, there is no guarantee that the file referenced by file_name does not exist prior to calling fopen(). This may cause an unintended file to be overwritten.
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FILE * fptr = fopen(file_name, "w");
if (!fptr) {
/* Handle Error */
}
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Compliant Solution
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The ISO/IEC 9899-1999 C standard does not provide a mechanism to determine if an existing file has been opened or a new file has been created. However, the {{open()}} function as |
O_CREAT and O_EXCL flags are used together, the open() function will fail if the file specified by file_name already defined in the Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6 \[[Open Group 04c|AA. C References#Open Group 04c]\] is available on many platforms and provides such a mechanism. If the {{O_CREAT}} and {{O_EXCL}} flags are used together, the {{open()}} function fails when the file specified by {{file_name}} already exists. |
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int fd = open(file_name, O_CREAT | O_EXCL | O_WRONLY, new_file_mode);
if (fd == -1) {
/* Handle Error */
}
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