Re: TOCTOU bug in make(1)

[David Holland <dholland-tech%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Sun, Oct 09, 2022 at 11:02:58PM +0200, Roland Illig wrote:
 > > On Fri, Oct 07, 2022 at 12:46:06AM +0300, Valery Ushakov wrote:
 > >   > It also, unnecessarily, IMHO, decided to change the return type to
 > >   > a more "modern" bool thus further obscuring the fact that the
 > >   > function was a simple wrapper around unlink(2).
 > > 
 > > Can we revert that? Using bool for success/failure is ambiguous (does
 > > true mean it succeeded or failed? both are reasonable) whereas 0/-1 or
 > > zero/nonzero is a clearly established and well understood idiom.
 > 
 > Can you show me a function in the NetBSD source tree that has return
 > type 'bool' (not 'int') and returns 'true' to indicate failure?

I don't know about in NetBSD as such, but in general I would say that

	failed = do_some_things();
	if (failed) {
	        ...
	}

is if anything more common than

	ok = do_some_things();
	if (!ok) {
	        ...
	}

because it preserves the common idiom (and widely held expectation)
that nonzero means failure.

But in any event, system calls and wrappers around them shouldn't be
returning bool.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost