Re: strtonum(3) from OpenBSD?

[Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>]

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 11:14:43PM +0200, Marc Balmer wrote:
> 
> Am 24.06.2009 um 21:42 schrieb Manuel Bouyer:
> 
> >On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 09:00:53PM +0200, Marc Balmer wrote:
> >>>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.
> >>
> >>I am eager to learn why it is bad.
> >
> >I think Thor explained it quite well. And yes, I did look at the man  
> >page.
> 
> he did not.  he completely failed to back his strong words...

I don't think so, I agree with his arguments.

> >There isn't even proper matching between the possible errno and the
> >possible errstr values in the man page ...
> >We could change it so that errstr points to strerror(errno) but then
> >there isn't much point in returning errstr at all.
> 
> I think all the criticism circulates around this error string... but  
> then this
> is what the implementors did.  it is not wrong.  If you don't want the
> string, pass NULL

And they you don't know if something bad occured or not.

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--