From owner-cvs-all  Wed Dec 18 18:22:34 2002
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Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 13:23:27 +1100 (EST)
From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
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To: Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu>
Cc: Ruslan Ermilov <ru@FreeBSD.org>, <cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org>,
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Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/lib/libc/sys _exit.2 accept.2 access.2 acct.2 
        adjtime.2 aio_cancel.2 aio_error.2 aio_read.2 aio_return.2        
 aio_suspend.2 aio_waitcomplete.2 aio_write.2 bind.2 brk.2 chdir
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On Wed, 18 Dec 2002, Garrett Wollman wrote:

> <<On Wed, 18 Dec 2002 01:22:37 -0800 (PST), Ruslan Ermilov <ru@FreeBSD.org> said:
>
> >   Stop calling system calls "function calls".
>
> >   Use "The .Fn system call" a-la "The .Nm utility".
>
> I believe that this is a mistake.  System calls are a special case of
> function calls.  The standards from which many of these descriptions
> are taken intentionally do not reference system calls, and neither
> should we, since the interfaces may move from one side of the boundary
> to the other.  (Many of these are, strictly speaking, function calls
> in the threaded C library.)

I mostly agree, but note that system calls are still carefully separated
from functions by putting them in a separate manpage section.  The threaded
case already bogotifies this separation.

Bruce


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