> Could someone post an example of the creation of a > temporary file where race conditions are important?
/any/ programme that does this on a multi-process system. Between the test for existence and the creation, some other process could have created a file of the same name. Then the create fails because of insufficient permissions, so the programme has to deal with failure anyway, or it succeeds and stomps on the data belonging to the other process. do possible_handle <- try $ openFile "whatever" ReadMode case possible_handle of (Right handle) -> do_things_to handle (Left error) -> do whatever you would have done had the existence test returned false is no more complex than a version using an existence test, but to create a file for writing, surely we need an openNewFile primitive? Otherwise we might open on a file that already exists and hit the "stomp" error mentioned above. Jón -- Jón Fairbairn [EMAIL PROTECTED] 31 Chalmers Road [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cambridge CB1 3SZ +44 1223 570179 (after 14:00 only, please!) _______________________________________________ Haskell mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell