Additional structure members (was: is struct utimbuf ...)

[Geoff Clare]

From:  Geoff Clare <gwc at root.co.uk>


In <423 at usenix.ORG> donn at hpfcrn.fc.hp.com (Donn Terry) writes:

>The solution in the 1990 revision is to prohibit additional fields
>for the structures like that.  (A vendor is then required to provide
>a new call to set microseconds, or whatever.)

>It was agreed that this was not the most desireable solution, but it
>was the only one that worked.

Has this changed again since 1003.1a draft 5, then?  I understood that
the technical content of the 1990 revision was to be the same as draft 5.

Here's what draft 5 says about struct utimbuf (and also struct sigaction):

    Adding extensions to this structure, which might change the behaviour
    of the application with respect to this standard when those fields in
    the structure are uninitialized, also requires that the extensions be
    enabled as required by 1.2.1.1.

In other words, there can be extra members, but if the application doesn't
initialize them, then utime() must work as described in the standard.
-- 
Geoff Clare <gwc at root.co.uk>  (Dumb American mailers: ...!uunet!root.co.uk!gwc)
UniSoft Limited, Hayne Street, London EC1A 9HH, England.   Tel: +44-71-315-6600


Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 21