Submitter: XXX
Submission Date: 2005-0X-XX
Source: Donald W. Cragun <don.cragun@sun.com>
Reference Document: Defect Report #276
Version: 1.0
Date: 2005-0X-XX
Subject: Problem with TC2 Change #67 (Add perror to the list defining byte input/output functions.)
Summary
The perror function should not set the orientation of the standard error stream if the orientation is not already set.
Rationale
ISO/IEC 9899:1990 as updated by Amendment 1: C Integrity did not identify the perror function as a byte input/output function nor as a wide-character input/output function. Therefore, calling perror was not allowed to set the stream orientation for the standard error stream. Although no rationale was given in the amendment for not specifying perror in either set of functions, it seemed to be the appropriate behavior. We would like to be able to use perror at any time when an application needs to report an error condition. If perror was defined to be a byte output function or a wide-character output function and the standard error stream's orientation had been set to the opposite orientation, the standard requires that perror shall not be applied to the stream. Furthermore, as part of aligning with Amendment 1, The Single UNIX Specification, version 2's description of perror says:
The perror() function does not change the orientation of the standard error stream.This quote was slightly transformed as Single UNIX Specification, version 2; IEEE Std 1003.1-1996 and IEEE Std 1003.2-1992; and ISO/IEC 9945-1:1996 and ISO/IEC 9945-2:1993 were merged to create the common Single UNIX Specification, version 3; IEEE Std 1003.1-2001; and ISO/IEC 9945-1, 9945-2, 9945-3, and 9945-4:2002 to be:
The perror() function shall not change the orientation of the standard error stream.
Therefore, the change in TC2 that turned perror into a byte input/output function created a conflict between the C standard and the POSIX standard.
If a fatal error arises and an application wants to use perror to print a diagnostic message, it is now required to be prepared to do something like:
save_errno = errno;
or = fwide(stderr, 0);
errno = save_errno;
perror("error identifying string")
freopen("", "w", stderr);
fwide(stderr, or);
rather than just calling perror.
Note that calling freopen with a null pointer as its first
argument did not have defined behavior in the previous C standard
and was required to give an ENOENT error in the previous revision
of the POSIX standard. Furthermore, if the standard error stream had been
wide-character oriented before the call to freopen, no
application reading that stream would know that it needed to switch
input methods when the orientation switched back to byte
orientation for the diagnostic. So, not changing orientation and
just printing byte oriented diagnostic messages would not seem to
make any difference to any application that was later trying to read
bytes that had been written to the standard error stream.
If it is believed that perror really needs to be classified as a byte output function, maybe it should also be specified that applications that use any wide-character input/output functions on the standard error stream produce undefined behavior (especially if they call perror).
Suggested Technical Corrigendum
Rescind ISO/IEC
9899:1999/Cor.2:2004 change #67 which states:
Page 263, 7.19.6.1
In paragraph 5, item 4, insert perror after gets.