Process Execution

O_CLOEXEC Closes Descriptors Atomically Across exec

A file descriptor created without close-on-exec state can escape into a newly executed program during a narrow concurrency window. In a multithreaded Linux process, setting FD_CLOEXEC with a later fcntl() call leaves that window open between descriptor creation and the flag update. O_CLOEXEC removes the split operation. The kernel creates the descriptor with its close-on-exec flag already set, so another thread cannot observe an intermediate state in which the descriptor exists but remains inheritable across a successful execve().