however, it's worth remembering, that in the Unix i remember at any
rate, _exit() is not always invoked on program exit.  it isn't invoked
if the program dies from a signal, for instance.

i've always presumed that the final close of fds is done when their
refcount drops to zero, i.e.  when the exited process's file table is
cleared up by the kernel.

so the actual _?exit() system calls are not that crucial to the issue
of file closing under AFS. stdio is a different matter, of course.

but i'm not entirely sure whether we're on topic here...  :-)

  cheers,
    rog.