Re: qsort_r

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>> If you can find me a description of what NetBSD assumes beyond what
>> C promises, [...]
> I don't think we have such a list.

I didn't think so either, but wasn't nearly sure enough to assume there
wasn't one.

> [...].  In this environment I don't think it's a good idea to make
> any assumptions at all about things the C standard doesn't guarantee.

Then there are a lot of things that need fixing; the one I'm most aware
of is the assumption that all-bits-0 is a nil pointer.  (This most
often shows up in the use of calloc, bzero, etc on space that includes
a pointer and then assuming the pointer is nil; see, for example, the
example code in 5.2's getaddrinfo(3) manpage.)

> (Also, as far as 8-bit types, while POSIX promises that char is 8
> bits wide, [...]

Exactly 8 bits, or at least 8 bits?  C promises it's at least 8 bits;
that isn't one of the things I had heard that POSIX said anything
about.

> [...] there's still from time to time loose talk about doing a port
> to a 36-bit machine, where char would presumably be 9 bits.  I think
> doing this and making it work this would be good for the general
> quality of the code base and I'd rather not introduce unnecessary
> complications.)

I agree.  (I've often thought it would be nice to have a checkout
compiler that went out of its way to break as many as possible of the
usual assumptions that are "true everywhere" but that C does not
actually promise....)

> The one exception to all this that I can think of is that we don't
> care about platforms where int is 16 bits wide.  Or 18, either.

Or anything else less than 32, I suspect.  I would even hazard a guess
that there's code in the tree that assumes int is exactly 32 bits,
though code assuming long is also 32 has most probably been eradicated
by now.

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