open_append(3)

✨ open_append — the "just keep adding to the end bestie" function ✨

okay so this one lives in section 3 of the Library Functions Manual (that's the man page family it's part of, iykyk), and honestly? she's simple, she's reliable, she's giving low-maintenance icon. 🎀

---

🌸 NAME 🌸

open_append — open a file for appending 💖

---

✨ SYNTAX ✨

#include <libowfat/open.h>

int open_append(const char *filename);

like. that's it. that's the whole vibe. one include, one function, one argument. clean. 💅

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay bestie so open_append opens the file called filename for appending, write-only use, and hands you back the file handle. that's the whole job. she's not doing extra. she's not doing less. main character energy but make it humble. 🫶

if that file does not exist? no stress, she creates it, with mode 0600. literally just makes it happen. ✨

and if something goes wrong — opening fails, creating fails, the universe said no — open_append returns -1 and sets errno accordingly. so like, always check your return value, bestie, that's the rule. 😭

💀 here's the part that actually matters and it is so important: all write operations will append after the last byte, regardless of previous calls to lseek(2) or other processes also appending to the same file. so if you were thinking "hmm let me just seek back to the start and overwrite a little" — no. she doesn't care. she doesn't see the seek. every write goes to the end. periodt. 🔥 and if another process is also appending to the same file at the same time, that's fine too, still the end, still appending. the way that this function just refuses to be derailed? obsessed.

---

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• open(2)
• open_excl(3)
• open_read(3)
• open_rw(3)
• open_trunc(3)
• open_write(3)
• openreadclose(3)
• readclose(3)
• readclose_append(3)

go read those too, they're the whole friend group, each one's a different flavor of opening files. 💜

---

and that's the page!! this was page open_append(3) from the Library Functions Manual — no date on this one so I can't give you one, sorry bestie, but she's out here living her truth in the library functions section. stay appending, stay iconic, check your errno. 💅✨🦋