Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!van-bc!jtc
From: jtc@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca (J.T. Conklin)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Fixing error messages (was Re: A tirade about inefficient software & systems)
Message-ID: <23@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca>
Date: 1 Nov 90 01:11:56 GMT
References: <1990Oct29.232733.2065@sctc.com> <3341@tantalum.UUCP> <RZS6.:A@xds13.ferranti.com>
Organization: UniFax Communications Inc., Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 18

In article <RZS6.:A@xds13.ferranti.com> peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>I'd be satisfied if one of them went through their source and whenever
>they have !fprintf(stderr, "Can't open %s\n", file);! replaced it with
>!perror(file)!.

I think you're on the right track.  But if vendors could be convinced
to change their error messages, I'd prefer something like this:

    fprintf(stderr, "%s: Can't open %s: %s\n", progname, strerror(errno));

As the program name, the kind of error the program "thinks" has happend,
and the perror() style error message are all present.

	--jtc

-- 
J.T. Conklin	UniFax Communications Inc.
		...!{uunet,ubc-cs}!van-bc!jtc, jtc@wimsey.bc.ca