A tale of two C's.

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

In article <7821 at brl-smoke.ARPA>, gwyn at brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
: In article <924 at cresswell.quintus.UUCP> ok at quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
: >It's worth noting that exactly this technique is an offical part of the
: >System V library interface (see 'matherr').
: 
: matherr() was intended to be replaced by user code (and so documented)
: as a deliberate aspect of its design.  None of the other library routines
: is obliged to support such perversion.

Yes, I know that.  I guess it's a mistake to try to be too succinct in news.
matherr() is a compellingly good(bad) example of how _not_ to design an
error-handling interface.  I thought I should provide some argument against
replacing library routines as well as some for.