From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <20010510051144.209.qmail@g.bio.cse.psu.edu>
From: "Scott Schwartz" <schwartz@bio.cse.psu.edu>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: [9fans] snprint(), getfields() specification
Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 01:11:44 -0400
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 9c8c1a54-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

The getfields() manpage says,

	If there are more than maxargs fields, only the first maxargs
	fields will be set.
	...
	Getfields return the number of tokens processed.

snprint() says something similar.

In both cases, if the limit is too small, there's no way to find out
how much space you actually needed.  Unix snprintf returns that value;
compare with the limit to know if you need to allocate more space,
or emit an error, or just use what you got.

I think we might be better off adopting that convention.