Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> On Thu, 11 Jan 2007, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>> That said, clearly something didn't check the error return of a write()
>> call. Some of that got fixed up recently, so it might even be fixed in
>> current git already.
>
> I'm not convinced.
>
> The "write_in_full()" logic is supposed to help people avoid problems, but
> it *still* returns a success for a partial write.
>
> Example of extreme breakage:
>
> static int write_buffer(int fd, const void *buf, size_t len)
> {
> ssize_t size;
>
> size = write_in_full(fd, buf, len);
> if (!size)
> return error("file write: disk full");
> if (size < 0)
> return error("file write error (%s)", strerror(errno));
> return 0;
> }
>
> which is TOTAL GARBAGE, because the disk-full event might have happened in
> the middle of the write, so "write_in_full()" might have returned 4096,
> for example, even though the buffer length was much bigger.
>
> I personally think write_in_full() is totally mis-designed. If you are
> ready to handle partial writes, you should use "xwrite()". If you're not
> ready to handle partial writes, you should either use "write_or_die()",
> _or_ you should expect a partial write to at least return an error code
> (which is how "write_buffer()" works).
>
> But that's not how write_in_full() actually works. Write-in-full does not
> return an error for a partial write, it returns the partial size.
>
> Which is idiotic. It makes the function pointless. Just use xwrite() for
> that.
The call was intended to replace a common idiom:
if (xwrite(fd, buf, size) != size)
error
write_in_full() is intended as a drop in replacement for that. On a
short write we will return a short count and that will fail such a test.
The call basically implements the standard write() call semantic with
maximum attempts to complete.
That said returning -1 would have the same effect.
-apw
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