ar breaking with "No error"

[Arnd-Hendrik Mathias]

Hi,
could anyone explain me what the code section below, cited from 
binutils-2.19.1/binutils/ar.c line 713 (in function open_inarch) is 
about? I encounter the problem, that using my newly built binutils ar 
like this

.../x86_64-temp-linux-gnu-ar rc my.a my.o

generates this output.
.../x86_64-temp-linux-gnu-ar: my.a: No error

while aborting.
I debugged it with gdb and found out, that I come into this bfd_fatal call.
Obviously, before creation of the new archive ENOENT is a correct value 
for errno after the stat (...) call, but as far as I can see, aborting 
with bfd_fatal (...) should only happen if the value of "silent_create" 
(set with command line flag c) is zero.
So, why is this piece of code there, anyway?
Best regards

A.-H.

Code citation:

#if !defined(__GO32__) || defined(__DJGPP__)

      /* FIXME: I don't understand why this fragment was ifndef'ed
         away for __GO32__; perhaps it was in the days of DJGPP v1.x.
         stat() works just fine in v2.x, so I think this should be
         removed.  For now, I enable it for DJGPP v2. -- EZ.  */

/* KLUDGE ALERT! Temporary fix until I figger why
   stat() is wrong ... think it's buried in GO32's IDT - Jax */
      if (errno != ENOENT)
        bfd_fatal (archive_filename);
#endif