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Date:      Wed, 01 Aug 2012 15:59:56 +0800
From:      David Xu <listlog2011@gmail.com>
To:        Konstantin Belousov <kostikbel@gmail.com>
Cc:        arch@freebsd.org, David Xu <davidxu@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: short read/write and error code
Message-ID:  <5018E1FC.4080609@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20120801071934.GJ2676@deviant.kiev.zoral.com.ua>
References:  <5018992C.8000207@freebsd.org> <20120801071934.GJ2676@deviant.kiev.zoral.com.ua>

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On 2012/8/1 15:19, Konstantin Belousov wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 10:49:16AM +0800, David Xu wrote:
>> POSIX requires write() to return actually bytes written, same rule is
>> applied to read().
>>
>> http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/write.html
>>> ETURN VALUE
>>>
>>> Upon successful completion, write() [XSI]   and pwrite()  shall
>>> return the number of bytes actually written to the file associated
>>> with fildes. This number shall never be greater than nbyte.
>>> Otherwise, -1 shall be returned and errno set to indicate the error.
>>
>> http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/read.html
>>> RETURN VALUE
>>>
>>> Upon successful completion, read() [XSI]   and pread()  shall return
>>> a non-negative integer indicating the number of bytes actually read.
>>> Otherwise, the functions shall return -1 and set errno to indicate
>>> the error.
> Note that the wording is only about successful return, not for the case
> when error occured. I do think that if fo_read() returned an error, and
> error is not of the kind 'interruption', then the error shall be returned
> as is.
I do think data is more important than error code.  Do you think if a 
512 bytes block is bad,
all bytes in the block should be thrown away while you could really get 
some bytes from it,
this might be very important to someone, such as a password or a bank 
account,  this
is just an example, whether filesystem works in this way is irrelevant.
While program continues to execute,  next read()/write() should return 
-1 and errno will be
set, I think both socket and pipe already work in this way, it is 
dofileread/dofilewrite have
made it not happen.

>> I have following patch to fix our code to be compatible with POSIX:
> ...
>
>> -current only resets error code to zero for short write when code is
>> ERESTART, EINTR or EWOULDBLOCK.
>> But this is incorrect, at least for pipe, when EPIPE is returned,
>> some bytes may have already been written. For a named pipe, I may don't
>> care a reader is disappeared or not, because for named pipe, a new
>> reader can come in and talk with writer again,  so I need to know
>> how many bytes have been written, same is applied to reader, I don't
>> care writer is gone, it can come in again and talk with reader. So I
>> suggest to remove surplus code in -current's dofilewrite() and
>> dofileread().
> Then fix the pipe code, and not introduce the behaviour change for all
> file types ?
see above, I think data is more important than error code,  and next 
read/write will
get the error.

>> For EPIPE, We still deliver SIGPIPE to current thread, but returns
>> actually bytes written.
> And this sounds wrong. I think that fixing the code for pipes would also
> semi-magically makes this correct.




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