Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!csun!kithrup!sef
From: sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: C News vs. Xenix
Message-ID: <1990Dec28.092331.29926@kithrup.COM>
Date: 28 Dec 90 09:23:31 GMT
References: <1990Dec16.234811.6293@zoo.toronto.edu> <580@camco.Celestial.COM> <1990Dec28.071117.28485@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd.
Lines: 33

In article <1990Dec28.071117.28485@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In fact, I'm told that the Xenix string.h strerror() definition is *almost*
>correct... but whatever lunkhead wrote it put a semicolon on the end of the
>#define!  

Hey!  I resent that!  I am *not* a lunkhead!  A chowderbrain, mayhaps, but
not a lunkhead!

>This is more or less harmless until you come to use strerror() in
>a complicated expression or a declaration, which may be why they didn't spot
>it.  (A less charitable possibility would be that they didn't test it at all,
>but it being the holidays, let's be charitable. :-))

Sadly, I *did* test it.  It was put in at the last minute, simply because it
was so easy to put in like that (that is, it was a simple change to the
header file, not changing the library and adding a whole new file to compile
and put into the archive [not a trivial task, I'm afraid]).  However, the
ANSI standard was, at that time, merely a draft, and I mereley an overeager
young programmer whose interpretation of the text was a bit short.  (This is
why I made it into a function for the next release of the devsys:  you
needed to be able to take the *address* of the function, and couldn't do that
with a macro.  Also, the way the header file is implemented requires /
causes name space pollution, and I was working very hard on cleaning that up
after that one release.)

In any event, you can blame me for it, and I apologise.  You may send nasty
hate mail to me all you wish.  I am hanging my head down in shame.  *sniff*

-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  | "I made the universe, but please don't blame me for it;
sef@kithrup.COM  |  I had a bellyache at the time."
-----------------+           -- The Turtle (Stephen King, _It_)
Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.