Re: copy_file_preserving variant that doesn't exit on error?

[Bruno Haible]

Reuben Thomas wrote:
> > errno describes _what_ error occurred. The error message also contains
> > information about _when_ it occurred.
> 
> Actually, the error codes returned by qcopy_file_preserving contain
> all the information about when the error occurred, as you can see in
> copy_file_preserving.

Yes, therefore a separate error-signalling function would have to take
2 arguments (ret, errno), not just one argument (errno) like strerror.

> I was thinking that a gnulib strerror could add support for these error
> messages without the need for extra functions like
> copy_file_preserving

Gnulib's <errno.h> and strerror() function are meant to be as close to
the POSIX definition of these APIs. We don't want to add random error
codes to them, just because 1 module out of 900 modules could make use of it.

Bruno