Question

I have used exit() to terminate the process. I do not have any exit handlers registered also I do not care about flushing buffers on exit, so thought of using _exit() as more robust method to terminate process.

The only question is, does _exit() handles closing of all open file descriptors and open sockets gracefully?

Answer 1

The function exit calls _exit. From TLPI:

The following actions are performed by exit():

• Exit handlers are called
• The stdio stream buffers are flushed
• The _exit() system call is invoked

The standard page for _exit says this:

All of the file descriptors, directory streams, conversion
descriptors, and message catalog descriptors open in the calling
process shall be closed.