Re: alarm(3) bug?

[enh <enh%google.com@localhost>]

On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 2:39 PM, Joerg Sonnenberger
<joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 01:58:29PM -0700, enh wrote:
>> i was trying to replace bionic's hacked alarm.c with the current
>> NetBSD alarm.c, but noticed that you return -1 on error, unlike glibc
>> and bionic, and apparently contrary to POSIX:
>>
>>   http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/alarm.html
>>
>> "The alarm() function is always successful, and no return value is
>> reserved to indicate an error."
>
> I'd say you have a bigger problem if the system call fails.

the user-observable difference between glibc/POSIX and NetBSD is for
alarm(0xffffffff).

> The alternative would be silently ignoring the error, which doesn't feel
> better.