[TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! [ really sun vs dec/apollo --> X and NeWS ]

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 08:31:52PM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Random832 <random832 at fastmail.com> wrote:
>  |On Tue, Sep 19, 2017, at 09:56, Larry McVoy wrote:
>  |> On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 03:53:59PM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
>  |>>|void    
>  |>>|my_perror(char *file, int line, char *msg)
>  |>>|{
>  |>>|        char    *p = 0;
>  |>>|        int     save = errno;
>  |>>|
>  |>>|        if (p = getenv("_BK_VERSION")) {
>  |>>|                if (strneq(p, "bk-", 3)) p += 3;
>  |>>|                fprintf(stderr, "%s:%d (%s): ", file, line, p);
>  |>>|} else {
>  |>>|                fprintf(stderr, "%s:%d: ", file, line);
>  |>>|}
>  |>>|        if (p = strerror(errno)) {
>  |>>|                fprintf(stderr, "%s: %s\n", msg, p);
>  |>>|} else {
>  |>>|                fprintf(stderr, "%s: errno=%d\n", msg, errno);
>  |>>|}
>  |>>|        errno = save;   
>  |>>|}
>  |>>|
>  |>>|libc should do that.
>  |>> 
>  |>> That really made me wonder why "save" is not used, errno may
>  |>> eventually change along the way.  Ok ok, but.. well.
>  |> 
>  |> Huh?  save is set with errno and then errno is restored to save.   The 
>  |> point of save is to do the library calls (which do syscalls which 
>  |> could in theory change errno) and leave it the same as it was on
>  |> the way in.
>  |
>  |I think his point was that you should be passing save (rather than
>  |errno) to the strerror and the last printf, because the preceding
>  |library calls may have changed errno.
> 
> Well, if _you_ see it the WallStreetFighter style then it needs to
> be said that an overwhelming, deadly, rather exterminating number
> of points have been made.  errno today is thread local storage, or
> worse some pthread-specific macro expansion, i see multiple
> call-ins to standard I/O which is potentially SMP-safe, stderr is
> unbuffered, getenv() can end up doing a sequential walk on a flat
> array with X number of strncmp() calls, in a context i assume the
> variable itself is constant over the entire run of the software.
> Also p=0 is C++ i think.  There are two value assignments inside
> a conditional statement without parenthesis.  If the file
> parameter comes from __FILE__ then that could and likely should be
> constant string storage, msg looks likewise but possibly not as
> bad.  This code would benefit from an iteration.
> 
> --steffen

Feel free to send in a patch!