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bug#7877: sleep 5 -4
From: |
Paul Eggert |
Subject: |
bug#7877: sleep 5 -4 |
Date: |
Tue, 25 Jan 2011 01:27:49 -0800 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101208 Thunderbird/3.1.7 |
OK, so it's late, but I can't resist:
First, 'sleep' does accept one number that's negative
in an IEEE-754 sense, namely, "sleep -- -0.0".
Second, due to rounding error, 'sleep' does accept some
numbers that are negative in a mathematical sense, e.g.,
"sleep -- -1e1000" works.
Third, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with 'sleep'
accepting negative numbers. All that POSIX
requires is that 'sleep' must sleep for at *least* the
amount of time specified. So, if "sleep -- -1.0"
is treated like "sleep 0", then it's conforming to
that requirement of POSIX (obviously it doesn't
conform to the other requirement that the operand be
a nonnegative decimal integer; but it's a valid extension
that is consistent with POSIX).
(Have I written enough to tempt you to extend 'sleep'
to allow negative numbers? :-)
bug#7877: sleep 5 -4, jidanni, 2011/01/24
bug#7877: sleep 5 -4, jidanni, 2011/01/25