Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!fletcher
From: karish@mindcraft.com
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: is struct utimbuf in the standard sys/types.h?
Summary: memset()?
Message-ID: <11013@cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 7 Aug 90 22:03:59 GMT
References: <423@usenix.ORG> <10937@cs.utexas.edu> <10980@cs.utexas.edu>
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Submitted-From: mindcrf!karish@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
From:  karish@mindcraft.com

In article <10980@cs.utexas.edu> guy@auspex.uucp (Guy Harris) writes:
|Unfortunately, the application is non-functional (at least not
|*correctly* functional) if it *doesn't* initialize the vendor-defined
|fields of a structure that's handed to the system ...

|... a
|portable application can, at best, only avoid setting the microseconds
|values of a file's accessed or modified times to some random value by
|"memset"ting the entire "utimbuf" structure to zero before filling it in
|and using it (or otherwise ensuring that the structure is zero before
|using it, e.g. using a static structure).

Keeping in mind, of course, that memset() may not be present on a POSIX
system that provides common-usage C language-dependent support.

Another ugly way to initialize the storage would be to make liberal use
of calloc() and free().
-- 

	Chuck Karish		karish@mindcraft.com
	Mindcraft, Inc.		(415) 323-9000		


Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 22