fseek offsets

[Chris Torek]

In article <541 at vsi.UUCP> friedl at vsi.UUCP (Stephen J. Friedl) writes:
>... I've seen it written somewhere that the only portable
>way to get an lseek(2) offset is as a result from a previous lseek(2).

[4.3BSD]
% man fseek
...
     Ftell returns the current value of the offset relative to
     the beginning of the file associated with the named stream.
     It is measured in bytes on UNIX; on some other systems it is
     a magic cookie, and the only foolproof way to obtain an
     offset for fseek.
...
[the most interesting thing to be found in the lseek manual page
is the following:]
BUGS
     This document's use of whence is incorrect English, but
     maintained for historical reasons.
[now THERE is a bug for you!  Much like the errata page in a certain
Viking Longship handbook, which reads, more or less, `page 85:
substitute ``erratum'' for ``errata''.']
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris