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To: Tony Maher <anthony.maher@uts.edu.au>
In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 16 Oct 2005 17:05:52 +1000 .
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Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2005 09:23:45 +0200
From: Danny Braniss <danny@cs.huji.ac.il>
Message-ID: <E1ER2rx-000DjZ-Hi@cs1.cs.huji.ac.il>
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: getenv semantics 
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> Danny Braniss wrote:
> 
> > now why would FreeBSD supply sources?
> > from /usr/src/lib/libc/stlib/getenv.c:
> > ...
> 
> Thanks I have the source but actually checking the call programatically
> should be better since since it does not rely on my interpretation
> of code.  It also does not help me understand the problems when code
> appears to work on other platforms hence my request for standards
> reference.

Standards/RFCs/etc are very nice piece of papers, reality tends to be less
forgiven: a program/routine will always do what the programmer intended,
now the problem is defining 'what the programmer intended' :-)

the advantage of open source is that you can check what the real world does,
and sometimes it reflects the wishes of the docs/posix/rfc, but mostly
it reflects the programmer interpretation.

danny


danny