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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: stdio error detection
Message-ID: <9063@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Dec-87 13:32:30 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.9063
Posted: Mon Dec  7 13:32:30 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Dec-87 13:32:30 EST
References: <289@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>, <13100001@bucc2>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 16

> >It would be really nice if the stdio functions were defined to set errno...
> 
> Set errno to what?  There is no way the C standards committee is going to
> attempt to identify all OS-dependent low-level error causes and provide
> standard encodings for all of them!

It's not necessary to do that.  It suffices to say that the function in
question sets errno and that strerror() can be used to turn the value of
errno into a human-readable string.  This does reduce the usefulness a
bit, since your program can't analyze the precise cause and do something
intelligent about it, but it's better than nothing.  Analysis of precise
causes is tricky anyway, since there is some variation in errno codes
even between different Unixes.
-- 
Those who do not understand Unix are |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
condemned to reinvent it, poorly.    | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry