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From: meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: v01INF1: Status - Status of comp.sources.reviewed
Message-ID: <MEISSNER.91Apr20151434@curley.osf.org>
Date: 20 Apr 91 19:14:34 GMT
References: <1991Apr16.131650.24389@scuzzy.in-berlin.de>
	<1307:Apr1702:20:0991@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <FUSA56C@xds13.ferranti.com>
	<25835:Apr1908:41:2991@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
	<B9UA6DD@xds13.ferranti.com>
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Organization: Open Software Foundation
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In-reply-to: peter@ficc.ferranti.com's message of 19 Apr 91 15:13:10 GMT

In article <B9UA6DD@xds13.ferranti.com> peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter
da Silva) writes:

| In article <25835:Apr1908:41:2991@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
| > While I'd love to pretend that most compilers ``out there'' are ANSI C
| > (and UNIX and a VAX and...), I don't want to keep my code from working
| > on the vast majority of implementations. I was under the impression that
| > some environments either do not provide perror() or do not set errors in
| > stdio; if perror() is universally available, I'll gladly recode the
| > error messages around sprintf() and perror().

Perror has been in Unix since V7.  Strerror on the other hand is a
creation of the ANSI committee.

| errmsg(object, context)
| char *object;
| char *context;
| {
| 	extern perror();
| 	char buffer[256]; /* or however big you want it */
| 	extern char *progname;
| 
| 	sprintf(buffer, "%s: ", progname);
| 	sprintf(buffer+strlen(buffer), context, object);
| 	perror(buffer);
| }

This can produce the wrong error message if sprintf sets errno (for
example if it calls malloc and malloc fails).
--
Michael Meissner	email: meissner@osf.org		phone: 617-621-8861
Open Software Foundation, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA, 02142

Considering the flames and intolerance, shouldn't USENET be spelled ABUSENET?