Re: Openat without die

[Jim Meyering]

Bastien ROUCARIES wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This two patches will allow to remove a xmalloc and bail out early in
> case of ENOMEM
>
> I plan to implement a API reusing openat_permissive()
>
> If openat_permissive cwd_errno is NULL use the slow but safe fork variant
> else use the fchdir variant
>
> Program that care could therefore use the more permissive variant
> (like for instance the critical fts without FTS_NOCHDIR)

Hi Bastien,

Before embarking on changes to (or duplication of) infrastructure like
the *at functions, please tell us about your motivation.  Why do you care
about whether openat may abort under unusual circumstances --- and only
on systems that are old enough that they can be challenging portability
targets?  As I tried to explain, there does not seem to be a clean way
to solve the problem, and besides, the target systems that would benefit
from this portability improvement are mostly old and dying: not supporting
POSIX-mandated *at functions is a good sign that they are not evolving.

> I program also to implement *at_permissive function
>
> What do you think about that?