Date: Mon, 27 May 1996 05:56:28 +1000 (EST) From: Darren Reed <avalon@coombs.anu.edu.au> To: imp@village.org (Warner Losh) Cc: dutchman@spase.nl, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Forgiving select() call. Message-ID: <199605261957.MAA12119@freefall.freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <199605221701.LAA04803@rover.village.org> from "Warner Losh" at May 22, 96 11:01:03 am
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
In some mail from Warner Losh, sie said: > > : I want to modify select(2) to return the `timeout left' as described in the > : BUGS section of the manual page. Any reason why I should not? > > That is *********NOT******* how select works. Too many programs do > not do the right thing when this is done. The failure mode is that > things seem to work but you have no CPU left for other thigns. Ths is > a *VERY*BAD* idea. Linux tried it and now they have bsd compatible > select behavior unless you go our of your way to get the behavior you > propose. Why? Too many programs were eating the CPU for lunch > because they were poorly programmed. And there were too many to > easily fix all of them. Linux is the *ONLY* system that changes the > timeval in the select call. > > It is a bad idea. If it had been a good idea, then Lite or Lite2 > would have had it changed. The bug in the man page is really a bug > with the man page by now, imho. > > If you want to have a system call that returns this information, don't > call it select. Any thoughts on writing a poll() which allows a variable number of bits passed in the fd_set (or new) structure to get around FD_SETSIZE limits ? darren
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199605261957.MAA12119>