[PATCH] fadvise(2) system call

Garrett Wollman wollman at hergotha.csail.mit.edu
Mon Oct 31 22:56:14 UTC 2011


In article <4EAF1F39.1090008 at FreeBSD.org>, dougb at freebsd.org writes:

>I don't see anyone in this thread saying that we should go back and
>change things that we already have. But if we're going to implement a
>new thing, giving it the standard name (however ugly, and I agree that
>it's ugly) is almost certainly the right way to go.

The existence of the posix_* names indicates that the pre-existing
implementations, on which POSIX based its standard, had some conflict
over the function's semantics or signature; the use of the reserved
posix_ namespace allows pre-existing implementations to support
pre-existing applications without conflicting with the requirements of
the standard.  The committee generally doesn't do this when all
implementations agree on the name (or when it's just making stuff up,
as it sometimes does).

If I were asked what color this bikeshed should be, I would suggest
that the most standard-compliant thing to do would be to name the
public interface according to the standard, but I would not object to
a set of macros which provided unprefixed names iff __BSD_VISIBLE.
That way, use of the official POSIX interface does not depend on
namespace pollution.  (But this discussion should probably be taking
place on standards@ rather than arch at .)

-GAWollman

-- 
Garrett A. Wollman    | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wollman at bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers.         | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993


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