I would like to safely be able to simulate open with O_CREAT | O_WRONLY | O_TRUNC | O_NOFOLLOW and O_CREAT | O_WRONLY | O_APPEND | O_NOFOLLOW on systems that do not support O_NOFOLLOW. I can somewhat achieve what I am asking for with:

struct stat lst;
if (lstat(filename, &lst) != -1 && S_ISLNK(lst.st_mode)) {
    errno = ELOOP;
    return -1;
}

mode_t mode = S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR | S_IRGRP | S_IWGRP | S_IROTH | S_IWOTH;
int fd = open(filename, O_CREAT | O_WRONLY | O_TRUNC | O_NOFOLLOW, mode);

but then I introduce a race condition and possibly a security problem.

I thought about maybe creating a dummy file with only the user being able to write, kind of like touching filename, doing the lstat check, and then using chmod after I finish writing (to correct the file mode bits), but I could be overlooking something major (e.g. if the file at filename exists, is not a regular file, or is already a symbolic link).

What do you think?