Re: Race conditions

[fred () nasirc hq nasa gov (Fred Blonder)]

        From: rwing!pat () ole cdac com (Pat Myrto)

        And if a temp file MUST be made, use the mkstemp()
        call to generate the name and open it.  Mkstemp()
        atomically generates the tempname from the template,
        opens the file and returns a handle.  As the manpage
        says, mkstemp() eliminates the race condition between
        testing if a file exists, and the opening of the tmp file.

But 'mkstemp()' is in section 3 of the manual; it's a subroutine,
not a system call, so how can it be 'atomic'?