Question

truncate needs the ___ of the file as an argument but ftruncate works with _______

(a) pathname, file descriptor

(b) file descriptor, pathname

(c) pathname, pathname

(d) file descriptor, file descriptor

I got this question in a national level competition.

Asked question is from System Calls Basics in section System Programming I – Files of Unix

Answer 1

Correct option is (a) pathname, file descriptor

Explanation: The truncate and ftruncate calls can truncate a file to any length. truncate needs the pathname of the file as an argument but ftruncate works with the file descriptor.