On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:24:53 -0400
Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%rek.tjls.com@localhost> wrote:
The function generates errno values which can't be used to
distinguish the error cases distinguished by the text strings,
which are (absurdly) specified in its manual page as part of the
API (in other words, the function as specified is inherently
non-localizable).
If it didn't set errno at all, it would be an example of really,
really bad API design. Since it does (but doesn't do so usefully),
it's merely an example of bad API design.
This is NetBSD. Cleanliness matters. I'm opposed to adding this
API to the system in its current form.
I'd have phrased it differently, but I agree with Thor -- this is a
bad
API. Nor have I seen sufficient evidence that it's widely used in
software we might want to import.