Re: [Nmh-workers] scan -width behaves oddly in 1.5RC3

[Tom Lane]

Ken Hornstein <address@hidden> writes:
>> I haven't had time to check, but I suspect -1 is what it's giving.
>> I disagree with your reading of the standard though: -1 means failure,
>> and in a failure case there is not any specification about what went
>> into the buffer.

> I agree with that ... but why is it failing?  If the only reason it's
> failing is because the buffer isn't big enough, that is wrong; it's
> supposed to return the number of bytes it wanted to write.  My reading
> of the code we have now is that it's correctly rejecting the case where
> snprintf() returns -1.

[ some experimenting later ... ]  What it appears to be doing is filling
the buffer to the specified length and then returning -1 anyway.  Given
your argument that there is no reason for it to fail, I suppose the
quickest hack is to assume that -1 means the same as "buffer filled".

                        regards, tom lane