•Re: close STDOUT and system equal strange?

You're trying to pull a fast one on the kernel, and you lost. "standard output" is file descriptor 1. When you open a new file, it goes to the lowest unopened file descriptor. Normally, 0, 1, and 2 are all busy being standard input/output/error, but by closing STDOUT, you left room for another file to be fd 1. Hence, you lose. If you don't want that behavior, don't do that.

If you want to ensure that the child's standard output goes nowhere, open STDOUT onto /dev/null instead.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

Comment on •Re: close STDOUT and system equal strange?

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(jptxs) Re: close STDOUT and system equal strange? by jptxs (Curate) on Feb 22, 2004 at 01:10 UTC
For the record, I wasn't trying =] I was happy to see it in the file in the larger program where I saw this happen b/c I had been planning on redirecting it there anyway. I suppose I could leave it this way, but I probably will not. It seems like a "bad way to do it". thanks for the enlightenment, merlyn. We speak the way we breathe. --Fugazi	[reply]
File::Spec->devnull(); by Anonymous Monk on Feb 22, 2004 at 08:54 UTC
or `File::Spec->devnull();`	[reply] [d/l]