[snatchpiesinger]

"Commit pending writes" and "discard file handle" should ideally be separate operations, with the former potentially returning errors and the latter being infallible. "Discard file handle" should be called from defer/destructiors/other language RAII constructs, while "commit pending writes" should be called explicitly in the program's control flow, with its error appropriately handled or passed up the stack.

Whether if it's allowed to write again after a "commit pending writes" operation or not is a separate design decision. If not, then in some languages it can be expressed as an ownership taking operation that still allows for handling the error.