People here seem to have strong opinions about this kind of thing, so...

There are moves afoot to change the POSIX definition of the abort()
function to make it compatible with C99.

Under pre-2001 POSIX, abort():
 + Effectively fclose()s all open stdio streams (like exit()), and
 - Must not be called from a signal handler if the signal interrupted an
   unsafe function.

This is likely to change such that abort():
 + May be called without restriction from a signal handler, and
 - Need not fclose() open stdio streams.

Would this change actually inconvenience anyone in the real world?  Is
that inconvenience worth it?

-- 
Ben Harris                                                   <bjh21@netbsd.org>
Portmaster, NetBSD/acorn26           <URL:http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/acorn26/>