On Thu, Jan 10, 2008 at 01:00:15PM +0000, Jim Meyering wrote:
> Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@xxxxxx> wrote:
> > Are you aware what this code does? It writes a ".keep" file. Whose
> > purpose is to _exist_, and whose purpose is fulfilled, even if the write
> > or the push-back did not succeed.
>
> Hi,
>
> I do see what you mean.
>
> If the write is not necessary, then perhaps you would prefer a comment
> documenting that failures of the write and following close are ignorable.
> And add a '(void)' stmt prefix, to tell compilers that ignoring the
> return value is deliberate.
Note that (void) isn't enough with the most recent gcc flavours, which
is a pain. I do use:
#define IGNORE(expr) do { if (expr) (void)0; } while (0)
for that purpose in my code. I know IGNORE isn't a brilliant name, but
it's modeled after the ocaml function doing the same thing.
> However, even if it's not technically required to fail at that point,
> if it were my choice, I'd prefer to know when a .keep file whose
> contents are unimportant just happens to reside on a bad spot on my
> disk. I/O errors should never be ignored.
Actually I think .keep files are empty, so the write() should not be
there in the first place, and we should only check for close() right ?
not that it matters that much.
> > I could not care less what the manual says. What is important is if the
> > defensive programming is done mindlessly, and therefore can fail so not
> > gracefully.
>
> On the other hand, if that write failure is truly ignorable,
> a mindless minimalist :-) might argue that it's best just to
> omit the syscall.
And leak a file descriptor :)
--
·O· Pierre Habouzit
··O madcoder@xxxxxxxxxx
OOO http://www.madism.org
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