[Caml-list] stat of nonexistent file

[Caml-list] stat of nonexistent file

[Hendrik Boom]

While reading section 2.3 of https://ocaml.github.io/ocamlunix/files.html
I noticed that it does not specify what stat and lstat returnsif 
the named file does not exist.

(a) What do they do?
(b) Should this be specified in the documentation?
(c) Are these suitable functions to determine if a file exists?

-- hendrik

Re: [Caml-list] stat of nonexistent file

[Daniel Bünzli]

Le lundi, 25 juillet 2016 à 14:55, Hendrik Boom a écrit :
> (a) What do they do?

The general design philosophy of the Unix library is to simply forward the call to the equivalent C function, turning errors in to a `Unix.Error` exception. So the question is usually resolved by looking at the documentation of the C function. In that particular case if the file doesn't exist you will get an exception with the NOENT error.
  

> (b) Should this be specified in the documentation?

I think it would be good if the documentation of the Unix module linked to the documentation of the C functions in the POSIX standard (you will notice the ocamlunix book usually does this when functions are introduced).


> (c) Are these suitable functions to determine if a file exists?
Yes. Don't forget to retry the call on EINTR though.

Best,  

Daniel