Yes, exactly. I don't understand why the Unix guys didn't solve this in libc, where it's both easy and simple (provided the system call returns all the informa

Yes, exactly. I don't understand why the Unix guys didn't solve this in libc, where it's both easy and simple (provided the system call returns all the information needed, as it surely would have been made to do had this approach been taken). Sure, occasionally someone will need to issue the bare system call without the libc wrapper, but that could have a different name, e.g. '_close'.