From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: [PATCH] sys_waitid: return -EFAULT for NULL Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:33:01 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: References: <20090113224759.7DFB7FC3DD@magilla.sf.frob.com> <20090113224941.36F19FC3DD@magilla.sf.frob.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Return-path: In-Reply-To: <20090113224941.36F19FC3DD-nL1rrgvulkc2UH6IwYuUx0EOCMrvLtNR@public.gmane.org> Sender: linux-man-owner-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org To: Roland McGrath Cc: Andrew Morton , mtk.manpages-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org, kernel list , Ulrich Drepper , Vegard Nossum , "linux-man-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org" List-Id: linux-man@vger.kernel.org On Tue, 13 Jan 2009, Roland McGrath wrote: > > It's always been invalid to call waitid() with a NULL pointer. It was an > oversight that it was allowed (and acts like a wait4() call instead). I'm not going to take this. If it was some new system call, of if there was some downside to out behavior, I might be interested. As it is, our behaviour has zero downside, and changing existing interfaces simply isn't worth it. The alleged "downsides" are bogus: - POSIX is not that strict. EFAULT is one of the odd error cases anyway, and even explicit requirements are irrelevant: if somebody wants to get strict conformance paperwork done, you just need to tell where you differ, and you're basically done. But perhaps more important, nobody cares. - The "portability" argument is totally bogus, since it's not like you compile programs without even testing to another UNIX _anyway_. So I'm simply not going to potentially break binaries over something that is so _totally_ irrelevant. Document it in the man-page instead. Linus -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html