Return to dump CVS log

Up to [Research Unix] / researchv9 / cmd / adb / null

Annotation of researchv9/cmd/adb/null/dump, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        1: From research!cithep!sickkids!mark Thu Nov  7 15:24 EST 1985
        !             2: I need to make a couple minor changes to dump, and having looked through
        !             3: the code I've been reminded of just how sleazy it is.  I've already told
        !             4: you about how it uses 1 rather than 0 as its normal exit status, thus
        !             5: ignoring all the standard unix conventions regarding such things.  Now
        !             6: I found another goodie.  There's an option which permits messages to be
        !             7: broadcast to all logged in users whom the program deems to be operators.
        !             8: The broadcasting is done by a subprocess.  (Never mind why; that's another
        !             9: story.)  What you may be amused and/or disgusted by is the following code
        !            10: fragment ...
        !            11: 
        !            12:        switch (pid = fork()) {
        !            13:        case -1:
        !            14:                return;
        !            15:        case 0:
        !            16:                break;
        !            17:        default:
        !            18:                while (wait(&s) != pid)
        !            19:                        continue;
        !            20:                return;
        !            21:        }
        !            22: 
        !            23:        if (!notify || gp == 0)
        !            24:                exit(0);
        !            25: 
        !            26: Given that the default is notify==0, think of all those poor processes,
        !            27: spawned only to die an immediate death!
        !            28: 
        !            29: But wait -- there's more!  It goes on to do its thing.  When it finishes
        !            30: up, it does ...
        !            31: 
        !            32:        Exit(0);        /* the wait in this same routine will catch this */
        !            33: 
        !            34: ... which is correct, provided you think it makes sense to do all this in a
        !            35: subprocess.  However, before getting to this point, one finds the following:
        !            36: 
        !            37:        if((f_utmp = fopen("/etc/utmp", "r")) == NULL) {
        !            38:                msg("Cannot open /etc/utmp\n");
        !            39:                return;
        !            40:        }
        !            41: 
        !            42: Yes, "return", not "exit"!  Who wrote this mess, anyway?  It seems worse
        !            43: than even my wildest nightmare of the possible product of a Joy/Horton
        !            44: collaboration.
        !            45: 
        !            46: 
        !            47: 

This archive runs on limited infrastructure. Preserving old code on modern bandwidth. Automated agents are requested to crawl responsibly.