Re: Ok, making ready for pre-2.4 and code-freeze..

Rogier Wolff (R.E.Wolff@bitwizard.nl)
Tue, 21 Dec 1999 17:03:34 +0100 (MET)

Tigran Aivazian wrote:
> Hi Rogier,
>
> You said:
>
> > The return code for unix system calls should be defined as "negative"
> > for error, and not "-1".
>
> I beg to differ because lseek(2) has the right to return negative offsets
> on some implementations (of UNIX) on some architectures (notably i386).

I beg to differ: lseek has no right to return a position before the
start of the file.

* Upon successful completion, lseek returns the resulting
* offset location as measured in bytes from the beginning of
* the file.

Maybe, some OSes are "breaking the rules" a bit by allowing larger
files than a 31-bit return value for lseek(2) allows, but that's their
problem.

And if you're bending the rules, I feel fine with reserving
-1000 to -1 as "Error returns" and allowing 4G-1000 byte files.

Roger. 

-- 
** R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl ** http://www.BitWizard.nl/ ** +31-15-2137555 **
*-- BitWizard writes Linux device drivers for any device you may have! --*
 "I didn't say it was your fault. I said I was going to blame it on you."


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