Re: lseek(2) BSD buglet

Christoph Hellwig
2010-08-14T09:48:40Z

On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 02:13:35PM -0400, der Mouse wrote:
> lseek(2) (noticed on 3.23, 3.25 has similar wording) says, in part,
>
> SVr1-3 returns long instead of off_t, BSD returns int.
>
> While the BSDs are not a single monolithic entity, NetBSD has returned
> off_t from lseek(2) since 1.5 at the very latest, meaning late 2000.
> I'd be surprised if there's a non-orphaned BSD left that still uses
> int.
>
> I'm not sure what wording would be best. Depends on whether you think
> it's worth mentioning the historical practice from the days when BSD
> deserved the B in its name or not, I'd say. Perhaps something like

I think removing it is fine. Historical SysV and BSD behaviour might have
been interesting in the early 90s, but these days it's something for a
history book and not a manual page.