Shared Lib Question (ISC)

[Kenneth Almquist]

jfh at rpp386.cactus.org (John F Haugh II) writes:
>>>Were the code in the C library pure, shared libraries would
>>>be extremely simple to implement.

and later challenges:
> Name a single library function which cannot be implemented well
> without global variables.  Justify your answer.

How about:

1)  getpwent and relatives -- needs global variables to hold the current
    state and the returned passwd structure.  (Placing these in a structure
    which is passed to getpwent would complicate the calling program,
    especially if the passwd file is examined in several places.)

2)  malloc/realloc/free -- requires a global data structure to keep track
    of which areas of memory are free.

3)  stdio/exit -- needs a global variable so that exit can locate and close
    all open files.
					Kenneth Almquist