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Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 12:51:50 -0800
From: Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>
To: Mikhail Teterin <mi@aldan.algebra.com>
Cc: David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com>, imp@village.org,
	hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, bde@FreeBSD.ORG, eischen@vigrid.com
Subject: Re: kern/13644
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References: <000001bf669f$94c4ec70$021d85d1@youwant.to> <200001242006.PAA35725@misha.cisco.com>
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* Mikhail Teterin <mi@aldan.algebra.com> [000124 12:35] wrote:
> David Schwartz once wrote:
> 
> >  The  man page  is  correct  and the  implementation  is correct.
> 
> Several people, said the man pages are broken:
> 
> 		Bruce Evans on Dec 28:
> 	> If timeout is a  non-nil pointer, it specifies
> 	> a maximum  interval to wait for  the selection
> 	> to complete.
> 
> 	This is a  bug in the man page. It  is so poorly
> 	worded that  it is broken. "maximum"  here means
> 	"minimum" in  the case  where no  selected event
> 	occurs.
> 
> 		Daniel Eischen on Jan 23:
> 	You have  to guarantee  that the actual  time is
> 	greater  than or  equal  to the  amount of  time
> 	specified.
> 
> 		Warner Losh on Jan 23:
> 	: Could you provide  the chapter/verse number of
> 	: where POSIX spec contradicts the man pages? It
> 	: will help  me make my  case on the  TCL forum,
> 	: since  the  TCL  developers remain  under  the
> 	: mistaken assumption, that  select() may return
> 	: earlier, but never later than specified.
> 
> 	Somewhere in the archives  have a pointer to the
> 	unified unix spec for select. Might want to look
> 	for  it. A  useful regular  expression might  be
> 	http://www.*/select.*.
> 
> This is becoming ridiculous. Somehow, I  get a feeling a bunch of people
> manage  to agree  with  each other  on a  subject  they express  exactly
> opposite opinions.

The manpage has been updated in -current:

     If timeout is a non-nil pointer, it specifies the maximum interval to
     wait for the selection to complete.  System activity can lengthen the in-
     terval by an indeterminate amount.

     If timeout is a nil pointer, the select blocks indefinitely.

     To effect a poll, the timeout argument should be non-nil, pointing to a
     zero-valued timeval structure.

If no one objects I'll be committing it to -stable and praying to the
gods that this thread dies.

-Alfred


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