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## 7. Opening The Device

A generic device has to be opened for read and write access:

> `

>             int fd = open (device_name, O_RDWR);

> `

(This is the case even for a read-only hardware device such as a cdrom drive).

We have to perform a `write` to send the command and a `read` to get back any results. In the case of an error the return code is negative (see section sec-errorhandling for a complete list).

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