NAME

       close - Close an open channel

SYNOPSIS

       close channelId ?r(ead)|w(rite)?
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

DESCRIPTION

       Closes or half-closes the channel given by channelId.

       ChannelId must be an identifier for an open channel such as a Tcl standard channel (stdin,
       stdout, or stderr), the return value from an invocation of open or socket, or  the  result
       of a channel creation command provided by a Tcl extension.

       The  single-argument  form is a simple “full-close”: all buffered output is flushed to the
       channel's output device, any buffered input is discarded, the underlying file or device is
       closed, and channelId becomes unavailable for use.

       If  the  channel is blocking, the command does not return until all output is flushed.  If
       the channel is nonblocking and there is unflushed output, the channel remains open and the
       command returns immediately; output will be flushed in the background and the channel will
       be closed when all the flushing is complete.

       If channelId is a blocking channel for a command pipeline then close waits for  the  child
       processes to complete.

       If  the  channel is shared between interpreters, then close makes channelId unavailable in
       the invoking interpreter but has no other effect until all  of  the  sharing  interpreters
       have  closed  the  channel.   When the last interpreter in which the channel is registered
       invokes close, the cleanup actions described above occur. See the  interp  command  for  a
       description of channel sharing.

       Channels  are  automatically  closed when an interpreter is destroyed and when the process
       exits.  From 8.6 on (TIP#398), nonblocking channels are no  longer  switched  to  blocking │
       mode  when  exiting;  this  guarantees a timely exit even when the peer or a communication │
       channel is stalled. To ensure proper flushing of stalled nonblocking channels on exit, one │
       must  now  either  (a)  actively  switch  them back to blocking or (b) use the environment │
       variable TCL_FLUSH_NONBLOCKING_ON_EXIT,  which when set and not equal to "0" restores  the │
       previous behavior.

       The  command  returns  an empty string, and may generate an error if an error occurs while
       flushing output.  If a command in a command pipeline created with open returns  an  error,
       close generates an error (similar to the exec command.)

       The  two-argument  form  is a “half-close”: given a bidirectional channel like a socket or │
       command pipeline and a (possibly abbreviated) direction, it  closes  only  the  sub-stream │
       going  in that direction. This means a shutdown() on a socket, and a close() of one end of │
       a pipe for a command pipeline. Then, the Tcl-level channel data structure is  either  kept │
       or freed depending on whether the other direction is still open.                           │

       A single-argument close on an already half-closed bidirectional channel is defined to just │
       “finish the  job”.   A  half-close  on  an  already  closed  half,  or  on  a  wrong-sided │
       unidirectional channel, raises an error.                                                   │

       In  the case of a command pipeline, the child-reaping duty falls upon the shoulders of the │
       last close or half-close, which is thus allowed to report an abnormal exit error.          │

       Currently only sockets and command pipelines support half-close. A future  extension  will │
       allow reflected and stacked channels to do so.

EXAMPLE

       This  illustrates  how  you  can  use Tcl to ensure that files get closed even when errors
       happen by combining catch, close and return:

              proc withOpenFile {filename channelVar script} {
                  upvar 1 $channelVar chan
                  set chan [open $filename]
                  catch {
                      uplevel 1 $script
                  } result options
                  close $chan
                  return -options $options $result
              }

SEE ALSO

       file(3tcl), open(3tcl), socket(3tcl), eof(3tcl), Tcl_StandardChannels(3tcl)

KEYWORDS

       blocking, channel, close, nonblocking, half-close