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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: expr?(void):(void)
Message-ID: <7032@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 8-Aug-86 16:39:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.7032
Posted: Fri Aug  8 16:39:40 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 8-Aug-86 16:39:40 EDT
References: <501@bunny.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 19

> we are working on a stdio-like library at waterloo which looks very
> similar to this.  Checking the value returned by putchar() every
> single time can be quite a waste...
> The solution we use is to have the _WriteBuf function, instead of
> returning an indication of error, either print the message and
> exit itself, or "raise an event" that can be trapped in the user's
> code (signals or longjumps).  [This wins big.]

On the whole I think this an excellent idea... but Ray, is it too late
to convince the people involved *not* to use signals for communications?
This has long been recognized as a bad idea.  And it's so unnecessary
in this case, and related ones:  it suffices to say that whenever the
_WriteBuf function fails, it calls (say) _WBerror with some suitable
parameters, and the user can substitute his own _WBerror function if he
doesn't like the default one.  This gets much of the benefit without
the various problems and unportabilities of signals.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry