The offset computation in write mode uses the fact that _IO_read_end
is kept in sync with the external file offset. This however is not
true when O_APPEND is in effect since switching to write mode ought to
send the external file offset to the end of file without making the
necessary adjustment to _IO_read_end.
Hence in append mode, offset computation when writing should only
consider the effect of unflushed writes, i.e. from _IO_write_base to
_IO_write_ptr.
The wiki has a detailed document that describes the rationale for
offsets returned by ftell in various conditions:
https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/File%20offsets%20in%20a%20stdio%20stream%20and%20ftell
Joseph Myers