From owner-freebsd-advocacy Fri Nov 27 22:28:10 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id WAA09326 for freebsd-advocacy-outgoing; Fri, 27 Nov 1998 22:28:10 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from obie.softweyr.com ([204.68.178.33]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id WAA09321 for ; Fri, 27 Nov 1998 22:28:07 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from softweyr.com (zaphod.softweyr.com [204.68.178.35]) by obie.softweyr.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA13552; Fri, 27 Nov 1998 23:29:19 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Message-ID: <365F982A.D878EE79@softweyr.com> Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 23:28:58 -0700 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr llc X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (X11; U; FreeBSD 3.0-RELEASE i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Terry Lambert CC: FreeBSD-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Merging Net/Free/Open-BSD together against Linux References: <199811272232.PAA20989@usr02.primenet.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Terry Lambert wrote: > > I'd agree if you wanted to say "Bad standards, like ISA, stifle > innovation", though... > > Not that I would mind rewriting all of libc to get rid off all static > or per thread allocated buffers, and to make all functions return only > status codes, forcing data returns to be implemented by passing a > return area by reference, mind you. I would *love* to see: > > int > ftell( FILE *stream, off_t*result) > > typedef u_int64_t off_t; > > (one example whre return values are overloaded to return error > information, to the detriment of the long term utility of the > interfaces). I, on the other hand, would prefer to see: File::Offset File::tell() // throws Error::Range, Error::... and place the reporting of "exceptional conditions" into a separate error communications channel. Let us not perpetuate yet another bad standard. YMMV. ;^) -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC http://www.softweyr.com/~softweyr wes@softweyr.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message