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From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: POSIX
Message-ID: <4380@ast.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 30 Oct 89 14:11:13 GMT
References: <3819@ast.cs.vu.nl> <1989Oct26.143100.4916@world.std.com> <2091@prune.bbn.com> <34633@grapevine.uucp>
Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 14

In article <34633@grapevine.uucp> johnz@grapevine.uucp (John Zolnowsky ext. 33230) writes:
>POSIX is full of "legalese" for these cases.  The EBADF case mentioned
>above, for instance, is prefaced by the conditional:
>	"For each of the following conditions, *when* [emphasis added -JZ]
>	the condition is detected, the closedir() function shall return
>	-1 and set errno ..."

Thanks you for your explanation.  I had assumed that "when" meant "at the
time that" rather than "if," but you may well be right.  I only hope that
the guys making conformance tests understand this.  The little test program
I posted actually checks for it.  If you are right, the test program is
overzealous.

Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)