The glibc manual section on initstate http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/BSD-Random.html#index-initstate-2292 makes no mention of NULL on error (which it does mention for setstate). As proof, the test code #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <errno.h> int main(int argc, char **argv) { void *state = NULL; int arg_state = 0; printf("errno before %d\n", errno); state = (void *) initstate(1, (void *) &arg_state, 7); printf("errno after %d (EINVAL is %d)\n", errno, EINVAL); printf("state returned from bad initstate call: %p\n", state); return 0; } returns errno before 0 errno after 22 (EINVAL is 22) state returned from bad initstate call: 0xb781f040 not errno before 0 errno after 22 (EINVAL is 22) state returned from bad initstate call: (nil) This makes sense because glibc's stdlib/random.c defines __initstate() to always return ostate (blank lines removed): char * __initstate (seed, arg_state, n) unsigned int seed; char *arg_state; size_t n; { int32_t *ostate; __libc_lock_lock (lock); ostate = &unsafe_state.state[-1]; __initstate_r (seed, arg_state, n, &unsafe_state); __libc_lock_unlock (lock); return (char *) ostate; } Personally, I think the behavior specified by the old man page makes more sense, but I don't imagine the glibc folks want to change their version. This patch it against the current Git version of man-pages, and was generated with 'git format-patch -1' before I altered it to include the extra information the man-pages project suggested: http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/patches.html W. Trevor King --- man3/random.3 | 5 +++-- 1 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/man3/random.3 b/man3/random.3 index 7568dc1..6845b98 100644 --- a/man3/random.3 +++ b/man3/random.3 @@ -120,9 +120,10 @@ The function returns no value. The .BR initstate () -and +function returns a pointer to the previous state. +The .BR setstate () -functions return a pointer to the previous state +function returns a pointer to the previous state array, or NULL on error. .SH ERRORS .TP -- 1.7.2.2.173.g515cc
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