On Sat, Oct 21, 2017 at 02:19:16AM +0200, Simon Ruderich wrote: > On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 06:46:08PM -0400, Jeff King wrote: > >> I agree. Maybe just stick with the original patch? > > > > OK. Why don't we live with that for now, then. The only advantage of the > > "999" trickery is that it's less likely to come up again. If it doesn't, > > then we're happy. If it does, then we can always switch then. > > I think switching the 4 to 9 (which you already brought up in > this thread) is a good idea. It makes accidental conflicts less > likely (it's rare to use so many file descriptors) and is easy to > implement. I'm not sure it does make accidental conflicts less likely. Grepping for '9>' shows a problematic one in t0008, and one in t9300. That's two versus the one for "4". :) We often use descriptors 8 or 9 as "high and not taken for any specific use" in our tests, and do things like: mkfifo foo exec 9>foo ... exec 9>&- This is unlike a redirection in a sub-command (like "foo 9>bar") because it effects the whole test suite's state. So it would break the test under "-x" (because we'd get random cruft sent to the fifo), as well as breaking the "-x" output itself (because we close the descriptor). I actually think "7" is the safest descriptor right now. It's not used for anything, and it's not high enough for tests to think "this probably isn't used for anything". -Peff
