From: sera@...
Date: 2005-02-05T06:15:18+09:00
Subject: Too many open files - getcwd (Errno::EMFILE)

So I'm working on my wonky FileSystem library, and right now it makes a
lot of calls to Dir.getwd. I find that if I use it enough -- right now
I'm integrating it into my main web site's unit tests, all 500 of them
-- then I get a traceback like this:

/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/filesystem.rb:251:in
`getwd'(TestArtbaseSubmissionPhaseChange): Too many open files - getcwd
(Errno::EMFILE)
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/filesystem.rb:251:in
`absolute'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/filesystem.rb:154:in
`fill_path'
        from ./test/ts_domain.rb:43:in `setup'
        from /usr/bin/runtest.rb:23:in `run'
        from /usr/bin/runtest.rb:33

The ruby-talk archives lead me to believe that Errno::EMFILE is thrown
when you have too many open files lying around, hence the error,
obviously. This is easy enough for me to work around, but I'm curious:
Why would Dir.getwd have this problem? Is it opening some files for
some reason?