From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: random832@fastmail.com (Random832)
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2017 14:09:06 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday,
 Dennis Ritchie! [ really sun vs dec/apollo --> X and NeWS ]
In-Reply-To: <20170919122425.513E34422C@lignose.oclsc.org>
References: <20170919122425.513E34422C@lignose.oclsc.org>
Message-ID: <1505844546.1334583.1111457456.3BAC6336@webmail.messagingengine.com>

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017, at 08:24, Norman Wilson wrote:
> I guess the problem with perror is that it isn't sufficiently
> UNIX-like: it bundles three jobs that are really separate
> (convert errno to string message, format an error message,
> output the message) into one function, inseparably and
> inflexibly.

Yeah, but you have to do all of that (plus exit, if the error isn't
recoverable) after every single function that might fail.  If the
function didn't exist, you'd have to write your own, so you're not
really any worse off if it doesn't do quite what you want.

if(open one thing < 0) { perror...; exit...; }
if(open another thing < 0) { perror...; exit...; }
if(!malloc...) {perror... exit... }
etc, I'd be half tempted to write a function just for *that*.

BSD's err/warn family is a further refinement on this - it allows
format/arguments, as I complained about in another post, and lets you
specify what file to send output to, and the existence of err vs warn
lets you avoid having exit as a separate step.