error-protected OPEN isn't a good way to fake a probe

[David A. Moon <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>]

    From: Robert Elton Maas <REM@IMSSS.SU.EDU>

      |Date: Mon, 8 Apr 85 14:33 EST
      |From: David A. Moon <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
      |Subject: Probe-File and proposed extension. 
      |To: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@CMU-CS-C.ARPA>
      |cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
      |	There needs to be some way to determine whether a file name is
      |    legal for output.
      |What's wrong with calling OPEN and handling the error when it fails?  Since
      |I don't understand the desired application, I don't know whether my question
      |makes sense.
    That's unacceptable. Suppose you have an application program that
    wants to write two output files (for example, binary and listing
    output from assembler or compiler) under luser-control (one or both
    names might be wrong, and this is common enough to protect against in
    a clean way). The program wants to check both files for validity
    before opening either. If you handle error when OPEN fails, then if
    the first name is good and the second bad, by the time you find out
    the second is bad you have already made the mistake of starting to
    create the first file when the process can't finish and the file must
    then be garbage. It is therefore necessary to probe both files before
    opening either (or at least probe all but one and then
    error-protected-OPEN the remaining; but probing all of them is cleaner).

This is what the :ABORT argument to CLOSE is for.