Re: The naming of at()s is a difficult matter

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Sun Feb 12 2006 - 12:41:07 EST


Jan Engelhardt wrote:
I have noticed that the new ...at() system calls are named in what
appears to be a completely haphazard fashion. In Unix system calls,
an f- prefix means it operates on a file descriptor; the -at suffix (a
prefix would have been more consistent, but oh well) similarly
indicates it operates on a (directory fd, pathname) pair.

shmat operates on dirfd/pathname?


Convention collision. They unfortunately happen (yet another reason the -at convention was ill choosen); another pretty bad clash is the f- prefix for use on file descriptors versus use on FILE *...

-hpa
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