C - Proper way to close files when using both open

Question

So I'm building a Unix minishell in C, and am implementing input, output, and err redirection, and have come across a problem with files. I open my files in a loop where I find redirection operators, and use open(), which returns an fd. I then assign the child's fd accordingly, and call an execute function.

When my shell is just going out and finding programs, and executing them with execvp(), I don't have much of a problem. The only problem is knowing whether or not I need to call close() on the file descriptors before prompting for the next command line. I'm worried about having an fd leak, but don't exactly understand how it works.

My real problem arises when using builtin commands. I have a builtin command called "read", that takes one argument, an environmental variable name(could be one that doesn't yet exist). Read then prompts for a value, and assigns that value to the variable. Here's an example:

% read TESTVAR
test value test value test value
% echo  ${TESTVAR}
test value test value test value

Well lets say that I try something like this:

% echo here's another test value > f1
% read TESTVAR < f1
% echo  ${TESTVAR}
here's another test value

This works great, keep in mind that read executes inside the parent process, I don't call read with execvp since it's builtin. Read uses gets, which requires a stream variable, not an fd. So after poking around on the irc forums a bit I was told to use fdopen, to get the stream from the file descriptor. So before calling gets, I call:

rdStream = fdopen(inFD, "r");

then call

if(fgets(buffer, envValLen, rdStream) != buffer) 
{
    if(inFD) fclose(rdStream);
    return -1;
}
if(inFD) fclose(rdStream);

As you can see, at the moment I'm closing the stream with fclose(), unless it is equal to stdin(which is 0). Is this necessary? Do I need to close the stream? Or just the file descriptor? Or both? I'm quite confused on which I should close, since they both refer to the same file, in a different manner. At the moment I'm not closing the fd, however I think that I definitely should. I would just like somebody to help make sure my shell isn't leaking any files, as I want it to be able to execute several thousand commands in a single session without leaking memory.

Thanks, if you guys want me to post anymore code just ask.

Answer 1

The standard says:

The fclose() function shall perform the equivalent of a close() on the file descriptor that is associated with the stream pointed to by stream.

So calling fclose is enough; it will also close the descriptor.

Answer 2

FILE is a buffering object from standard C library. When you do fclose (standard C function) it will eventually call close (Unix system function) but only after making sure C library buffers are flushed. So, I would say, if you use fopen andfwrite then you should use fclose, and not just close, otherwise you risk loosing some data.