zed-industries/zed · error · anyhow::Error

Could find a path for the file handle

Error message

Could find a path for the file handle

What it means

On macOS, after fcntl(F_GETPATH) succeeded, converting the returned C string into an OsStr/path failed — the guard 'Could find a path for the file handle' fires in the post-syscall conversion step when no valid path bytes could be extracted for the handle. The syscall worked but the buffer-to-path step yielded nothing usable.

Source

Thrown at crates/fs/src/fs.rs:482

}

impl FileHandle for std::fs::File {
    #[cfg(target_os = "macos")]
    fn current_path(&self, _: &Arc<dyn Fs>) -> Result<PathBuf> {
        use std::{
            ffi::{CStr, OsStr},
            os::unix::ffi::OsStrExt,
        };

        let fd = self.as_fd();
        let mut path_buf = MaybeUninit::<[u8; libc::PATH_MAX as usize]>::uninit();

        let result = unsafe { libc::fcntl(fd.as_raw_fd(), libc::F_GETPATH, path_buf.as_mut_ptr()) };
        anyhow::ensure!(result != -1, "fcntl returned -1");

        // SAFETY: `fcntl` will initialize the path buffer.
        let c_str = unsafe { CStr::from_ptr(path_buf.as_ptr().cast()) };
        anyhow::ensure!(!c_str.is_empty(), "Could find a path for the file handle");
        let path = PathBuf::from(OsStr::from_bytes(c_str.to_bytes()));
        Ok(path)
    }

    #[cfg(target_os = "linux")]
    fn current_path(&self, _: &Arc<dyn Fs>) -> Result<PathBuf> {
        let fd = self.as_fd();
        let fd_path = format!("/proc/self/fd/{}", fd.as_raw_fd());
        let new_path = std::fs::read_link(fd_path)?;
        if new_path
            .file_name()
            .is_some_and(|f| f.to_string_lossy().ends_with(" (deleted)"))
        {
            anyhow::bail!("file was deleted")
        };

        Ok(new_path)
    }

View on GitHub (pinned to 9d272b0363)

Solutions

1. Handle the failure by treating the file as having no recoverable path (untitled/anonymous buffer)
2. Track the open path at creation time as a durable fallback instead of querying the fd

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at crates/fs/src/fs.rs:446 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of zed-industries/zed@9d272b0363 (2026-08-20). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8f29436c36e10123. Report an issue: GitHub.