file descriptor

programming, operating system An integer that identifies an

open file within a process. This number is obtained as a

result of opening a file. Operations which read, write, or

close a file would take the file descriptor as an input

parameter.

In many operating system implementations, file descriptors

are small integers which index a table of open files. In

Unix, file descriptors 0, 1 and 2 correspond to the

standard input, standard output and standard error files

respectively.

See file descriptor leak.

(1998-02-06)