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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards,net.lang.c
Subject: Re: integer types, sys calls, and stdio
Message-ID: <4912@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 12-Jan-85 20:02:04 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.4912
Posted: Sat Jan 12 20:02:04 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Jan-85 20:02:04 EST
References: <1997@mordor.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 17

> An alternate definition might be:
> 
> 	daddr_t lseek(fildes, offset, whence)
> 	daddr_t offset;
> 
> where "daddr_t", defined in , is machine-dependent.

Actually, there already is a type specifically for offsets into files:
off_t.  Unfortunately, it's not nearly as widely used as it should be.
You have a choice of "doing it right" and having a fair bit of work to
do on old programs, or giving in to practicality and using "long".

Lamentably, the current draft of the ANSI C standard uses "long" for
fseek() and ftell().
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry