Accessing the file descriptor for an fstream (gcc3-)

[Eljay Love-Jensen]

Hi Sofia,

Support for accessing the file descriptor for an fstream has been removed for two reasons:
1) allowing it is in violation of the ISO 14882 specification
2) not all operating systems have file descriptors, and as such, it makes for non-portable code

When does a person want to access the file descriptor?  Well, for file locking purposes / record locking / range locking purposes.

That kind of functionality is, usually, very OS specific.  (Some OS's need to have a locking-enabled kernel compiled, special.)

For those kinds of purposes, an fstream is the wrong thing to use to access the file.

--Eljay