Very Computer

Hi all,

i have script wich has to use a logfile very often to store all information.
For the moment i use the 'normal' syntax  echo "Whats going on" >> $logfile

I was thinking about opening a new output channel for shell (ksh)
exec 3> $logfile
and to echo all information into it with print -u3 "Whats going on"

But am not sure if i create more problems than i get advantages. As i
understood the output channel stays open all the time until i close it
explicitly with 'exec 3>&-' , actually this should save time during running
the script, but what happens when i am not able to close the channel in case
the script hangs,fails,aborts unexpected...

Are there any other things i have to care about?

Anybody using this ?
Any information on this are welcome
Thanx in advance
-jens-

I don't think any of those things should be much of a problem.  However, a
problem could be if your script runs continuously in the background and you
need to rotate the logfile.  When you rename it, your script will continue
writing to the old file under its new name; it only notices the name change
when it opens the file.  So you would have to provide some way to tell the
script that it should close the file and reopen it (this is what happens
when you send SIGHUP to syslogd).

For most shell scripts, the overhead of reopening the logfile each time you
echo something to it is negligible, so I wouldn't bother complicating the
script for this.

--

Genuity, Burlington, MA
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