file descriptor

1 definition found

file descriptor - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  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)