Subject: standards/21004: ERANGE is inaccurately described by strerror(3), etc
To: None <gnats-bugs@gnats.netbsd.org>
From: Andrew Brown <atatat@atatdot.net>
List: netbsd-bugs
Date: 04/03/2003 22:34:16
>Number: 21004
>Category: standards
>Synopsis: ERANGE is inaccurately described by strerror(3), etc
>Confidential: no
>Severity: non-critical
>Priority: medium
>Responsible: standards-manager
>State: open
>Class: doc-bug
>Submitter-Id: net
>Arrival-Date: Thu Apr 03 19:35:00 PST 2003
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator: TheMan
>Release: 1.6Q (userland and kernel as of 20030325)
>Organization:
none
>Environment:
System: NetBSD this 1.6Q NetBSD 1.6Q (THAT) #175: Mon Mar 31 16:14:57 EST 2003 andrew@this:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/THAT i386
>Description:
ERANGE is described in errno(2) with the comment "Numerical
result out of range", but the include file sys/errno.h and
strerror(3) describe it as "Result too large"?
>How-To-Repeat:
man errno
more /usr/include/sys/errno.h
write a program that displays the result of strerror(ERANGE)
>Fix:
i dunno what the standards say, but the inconsistency is
annoying. the "out of range" seems more apt, yet somewhat
obtuse. the "too large" description is also wrong with
respect to common sense unless you really believe that -2 is
"too large" to fit into the range of 0..127 (for example).
the word "large" just doesn't sound correct.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: