lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2000]   [Oct]   [8]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
From
SubjectRe: 2.4.0-test9: minixfs causing oopsen when out of inodes
Date
Alexander Viro wrote:
>
> On Sun, 8 Oct 2000, Daniel Phillips wrote:
>
> > Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > > This, btw, is why Linux returns error numbers as -Exxx instead of using
> > > "-1" and "errno" - I dislike the latter enormously.
> >
> > It's not just a matter of disliking it, it's also not reentrant.
>
> ??? Yes it is, if pointer goes to an auto variable in caller. I also do
> not like it, but reentrancy is _not_ the reason.

1 /*
2 * linux/lib/errno.c
3 *
4 * Copyright (C) 1991, 1992 Linus Torvalds
5 */
6
7 int errno;
8

Doesn't look very automatic to me.

> > It would be nice if we could return a struct consisting of the error and
> > result. I'm not sure if this is allowed in C now or not. It didn't
> > work when I tried it with gcc: it seems to consider a struct-valued
> > function to be a void-valued. Odd.
>
> Eww... _Please_, let's not mess with structures in arguments/return
> values/assignments. For one thing, it's bloody inefficient on many
> platforms. For another, I don't like the idea of kernel becoming a
> crash-dummy for gcc folks.

It doesn't have to be inefficient - on x86 for example it's common to
return double results in ax:dx. Then a two-int struct can be passed
back just like a double.

If it was solid on all platforms I'd use it (it isn't - flunked my test
case, bad start). Even if it wasn't particularly efficient, so long as
not grossly inefficient (passing back a linked list of bits would be too
slow). Where correctness matter more than efficiency, which is most
places, why not?

The other problem is that C doesn't have any nice syntax for handling a
struct result. You have to do something like:

struct result result = unreliable();
if (result.errror) goto do_something;
<do something with result.value>

which isn't a lot better than:

int err;
int value = unreliable(&err);
if (err) goto do_something;
<do something with value>

To be nice to use, it would have to look something like:

with unreliable() if (!error) <do something with value>

which is essentially a lambda expression. But that's another language.

Throwing and catching exceptions lets you get rid of a huge amount of
this ugly, error prone kind of code, but there is a well known problem:
C doesn't have exceptions. So that's out. I think the answer is, there
is no answer. One day I'd like to take some time and hack in an
exception thrower/catcher as a demonstration.

> Functions returning structures are in a very dark area of C - let somebody
> else break their necks debugging the compilers.

That makes sense to me :-)

--
Daniel
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 12:39    [W:0.735 / U:0.076 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site