Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!mit-eddie!bbn!apple!rutgers!att!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Request For Elm Feature
Message-ID: <8152@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 7 Apr 89 03:48:30 GMT
References: <919@itivax.iti.org> <4941@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> <928@itivax.iti.org>
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 22

In article <928@itivax.iti.org> scs@vax3.UUCP (Steve Simmons) writes:

>>+On another note, we ran out of /tmp space today and users lost
>>+their messages (Elm 2.1 with some patches, BSD4.3 OS).  Has
>>+errorchecking been added to handle this?

>>Not yet. This may be a complex task: all fwrites, fprintfs,
>>fcloses, etc. will need to be checked, and error information passed
>>up a chain of functions to the proper level where the error can be
>>appropriately dealt with. . .

>Yeah, I knew how difficult it was when I asked.

Instead of trying to make every function try to do the "right thing"
on an error, how about just deleting the tmp file and lock and
DO NOT delete the mailbox file as you bail out.  The only thing that
would make this even moderately difficult is the variable arguments
to fprintf() which might prevent a simple macro solution.  Dying with
an error message may be a little unfriendly, but deleting mail accidentally
is anti-social.

Les Mikesell