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>applications that close all file descriptors (and you have still not named one)

elinks:

https://github.com/yggi49/elinks/blob/master/src/protocol/fi...

https://github.com/yggi49/elinks/blob/master/src/protocol/co...

That doesn't count. It's closing file descriptors before exec (and in one case, before doing some tightly-scoped work). It has nothing to do with closing all file descriptors, then expecting to use arbitrary third-party libraries.

And example of what happens if you don't close all file descriptors: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=38915

Yes, letting child processes inherit stray file descriptors is dangerous. We're not talking about calling all file descriptors immediately before exec. We're talking about applications that say, "Ok now, I'm going to close all file descriptors and go back to what I was doing". You can't expect libraries to work when you're freed their internal resources from under them.

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