Re: [PATCH -mm] Introduce strtol_check_range()

[Satyam Sharma <satyam@infradead.org>]

Hi Jan,


On Fri, 3 Aug 2007, Jan Engelhardt wrote:

> 
> On Aug 2 2007 05:16, Satyam Sharma wrote:
> >
> >BSD's strtonum(3) is a detestful, horrible shame.
> >
> >The strtol_check_range() I implemented here does _all_ that strtonum()
> >does, plus is generic w.r.t. base, and minus the tasteless "errstr"
> >argument.
> >
> >Tell me, how does that "errstr" ever make sense? We _anyway_ return
> >errors (-EINVAL or -ERANGE) if any of those cases show up.
> 
> errstr (well, at least for strtol) are useful to find the first character that
> does not make up a number (and then do whatever the user wants to, including,
> continuing to parse). For example "chown 0:1337", strtol on "0:1337" should
> give errstr=pointer to the ":", then check for it being a ':', then you know
> the next char is the GID. :)

We were actually discussing the "errstr" that's the fourth argument of
BSD's strtonum(3) which has quite radically different semantics [1]
from the "endptr" argument of strtol(3). Anyway, I originally
misunderstood the interface / the correct way to be using that function
as I later mentioned in the other mail -- also see the answer to point
#3 in [2]. Porting it over to here does sound like a good idea.

I'm off on vacation with little or intermittent (possibly none) access
to email for the next 10 days, so please feel free to beat me to it :-)


Satyam

[1] http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=strtonum&apropos=0&sektion=3&manpath=FreeBSD+7-current&format=html
[2] http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2005-April/048744.html
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/