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From: gwyn@BRL.ARPA (VLD/VMB)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re:  putw return value
Message-ID: <4066@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 23-Sep-86 17:10:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.4066
Posted: Tue Sep 23 17:10:40 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Sep-86 07:10:25 EDT
Sender: news@brl-smoke.ARPA
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There have been various versions of putw() on UNIX systems.
Some returned the word written or EOF on failure, which was
ambiguous.  Somebody then decided that putw() should return
0 on success, EOF on failure.  However, the implementation
didn't follow the new spec.  SVR3 has it that putw() should
return ferror() or EOF on failure.  I think this is the
same as 0 or EOF.  My feeling is that you should ignore the
return value of putw() since there's no telling what it
will be next week, and use ferror() to detect an error.