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From: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Newsgroups: comp.archives
Subject: [comp.bugs.4bsd...] Re: Complexity of reallocating storage
Message-ID: <1991Feb5.215412.14981@ox.com>
Date: 5 Feb 91 21:54:12 GMT
References: <21548@yunexus.YorkU.CA> <5883:Feb102:05:4991@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1991Feb4.195805.16710@ora.com>
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Archive-name: library/usenix/canthappen/1991-02-04
Archive: cs.toronto.edu:/doc/programming/canthappen.PS [128.100.1.65]
Original-posting-by: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Original-subject: Re: Complexity of reallocating storage
Reposted-by: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)


   From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
   Date: 2 Feb 91 07:10:47 GMT

   >    (void) read(fdsess,(char *) &newuid,sizeof(int));

   This is guaranteed to work [...]

   >    (void) chdir("..");

   This is guaranteed to work.

   >      (void) chdir(newsuid);
   >     }

   Cannot fail.

  [and so forth]

I commend to you a paper titled "Can't Happen, or /*NOTREACHED*/, or
Real Programs Dump Core", by Ian Darwin & Geoff Collyer.  It can be
found in the proceedings of the Winter Usenix Conference, Dallas 1985,
pages 136-151.  Or FTP to cs.toronto.edu will get you the Postscript
version under doc/programming/canthappen.PS.

Since "anything that can go wrong will go wrong", it is a programmer's
responsibility to deal with Murphy as gracefully as possible.  Dumping
core is never graceful.

				AMBAR