9
Handling of unlikely syscall errors (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
10 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

If you were designing a standard library of a high level language (like Rust, C++, etc.) what would it do if while getting the current time of day (e.g. SystemTime::now()) it encountered a failed kernel system call (e.g. to clock_gettime) and why?

What do you think the existing implementations do?

  • Return error or raise exception
  • Return 0
  • Return undefined values (like stack garbage)
  • Panic/crash/segfault
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago

Uninitialized automatic variables. E.g. (in C/C++):

int get_time() {
  int time;
  syscall(/* something that fails */, &time);
  return time;
}
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent