From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Dec 21 15:32:33 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8AEC3106566C; Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:32:33 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jhb@freebsd.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [65.122.17.42]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 61AB08FC0C; Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:32:33 +0000 (UTC) Received: from bigwig.baldwin.cx (bigwig.baldwin.cx [96.47.65.170]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 18E2A46B2A; Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:32:33 -0500 (EST) Received: from jhbbsd.localnet (unknown [209.249.190.124]) by bigwig.baldwin.cx (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 92331B93A; Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:32:32 -0500 (EST) From: John Baldwin To: mdf@freebsd.org Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:31:11 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.13.5 (FreeBSD/8.2-CBSD-20110714-p8; KDE/4.5.5; amd64; ; ) References: <201112201649.06265.jhb@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <201112211031.11977.jhb@freebsd.org> X-Greylist: Sender succeeded SMTP AUTH, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.2.7 (bigwig.baldwin.cx); Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:32:32 -0500 (EST) Cc: Robert Watson , current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: extattr_set_*() return type X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:32:33 -0000 On Tuesday, December 20, 2011 5:18:58 pm mdf@freebsd.org wrote: > On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 1:49 PM, John Baldwin wrote: > > Hmm, if these functions are expected to operate like 'write(2)' and are > > supposed to return the number of bytes written, shouldn't their return value > > be 'ssize_t' instead of 'int'? It looks like the system calls themselves > > already do the right thing in setting td_retval[] (they assign a ssize_t to it > > and td_retval[0] can hold a ssize_t on all of our current platforms). It > > would seem that the only change would be to the header and probably > > syscalls.master. I guess this would require a symver bump to fix though. > > An extended attribute larger than 2GB is a programming abuse, though. > Technically int may not be 32 bits but it is on all supported > platforms now. Today it is an abuse. In the 90's a 64-bit off_t was considered an abuse by some. :) The type should match the documented behavior. On OS X the set operation doesn't return a size but instead returns a simple success/failure (0 or -1) for which an int is appropriate. However, the FreeBSD API documents that it operates like write and consumes the buffer. Note that the size of the buffer passed to the 'set' and 'get' operations is a size_t, not an int, and the 'get' operations already return a ssize_t, not an int. -- John Baldwin