Subject: getnameinfo flags type
To: None <kleink@netbsd.org>
From: Ben Harris <bjh21@netbsd.org>
List: tech-net
Date: 05/22/2002 17:45:59
> revision 1.26
> date: 2002/05/22 09:42:37;  author: kleink;  state: Exp;  lines: +2 -2
> Turn the flags argument to getnameinfo(3) back into an int (from unsigned
> int); this is consistent with RFC2553, the current draft-ietf-ipngwg-
> rfc2553bis-05 and the majority of deployed implementations.
>
> Also, there is an effort under way to have this changed back to int in
> XBD6/XSH6, XNS, and POSIX-2001 TC1.

That effort is very unlikely to succeed, since the set of changes that
will go into TC1 is pretty close to finalised, and that one was explicitly
rejected.  As far as I could tell, the XNS/POSIX people believed that the
IETF people had handed over the development of API standards to XNS/POSIX,
and hence that any changes that XNS/POSIX made would be definitive.
General consensus seemed to be that using "unsigned" for flags words
rather than "int" was sensible, and that the API was new enough that there
wouldn't be any applications or implementations that couldn't easily
change to "unsigned" (the change being invisible to almost all
applications).

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