List of routines safe to use in signals?

Jonathan I. Kamens jik at athena.mit.edu
Fri Dec 14 07:59:57 AEST 1990


In article <1990Dec13.022804.7712 at scuzzy.in-berlin.de>, src at scuzzy.in-berlin.de (Heiko Blume) writes:
|> don't get me wrong, but there are so many things that are in the
|> man page, but just don't work.

  Then they should be fixed as they are found.

  A man page for a library function is a specification for that function. 
Degenerating a little bit, a specification for a function is also a
specification for that function.  The definition and purpose of a
specification in computer programming is that it tells you, as a programmer,
what YOU need to do and what the FUNCTION guarantees to do when you call it.

  Saying that we shouldn't listen to what's in man pages because there are
mistakes in man pages is like saying that whenever you put an answer into a
crossword puzzle and peek at the answer key and it's different, you should
assume that the answer key is wrong since there have been mistakes in answer
keys in the past.

-- 
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