Debian Bug report logs - #357893
manpages-dev: tempnam indicates that the retval (rather than errno) is EEXIST

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Justin Pryzby <justinpryzby@users.sourceforge.net>

To: submit@bugs.debian.org

Subject: manpages-dev: tempnam indicates that the retval (rather than errno) is EEXIST

Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2006 20:38:40 -0500

Package: manpages-dev
Version: 2.22-1
Severity: minor

I could rant for a while about how the temp file creation functions
all suck, but I'll spare you, but for this (very minor) problem in
tempnam(3):

  Upon failure to find a unique name, glibc will return EEXIST.

In fact, EEXIST is defined (here) as 17, which is a nonsensical
error return value; presumably, what's intended is:

  Upon failure to find a unique name, glibc will return NULL and set
  errno to EEXIST.

(This could also go into "ERRORS", but makes sense in NOTES, too.)

Message #10 received at 357893@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: "Michael Kerrisk" <mtk-manpages@gmx.net>

To: Justin Pryzby <justinpryzby@users.sourceforge.net>,357893@bugs.debian.org

Cc: control@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#357893: manpages-dev: tempnam indicates that the retval (rather than errno) is EEXIST

Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 03:13:45 +0100 (MET)

tags 357893 fixed-upstream
thanks

> I could rant for a while about how the temp file creation functions
> all suck, but I'll spare you, but for this (very minor) problem in
> tempnam(3):
> 
>   Upon failure to find a unique name, glibc will return EEXIST.
> 
> In fact, EEXIST is defined (here) as 17, which is a nonsensical
> error return value; presumably, what's intended is:
> 
>   Upon failure to find a unique name, glibc will return NULL and set
>   errno to EEXIST.
> 
> (This could also go into "ERRORS", but makes sense in NOTES, too.)

I agree -- the wording is poor.  I have fixed for 2.26.

Cheers,

Michael

-- 
Michael Kerrisk
maintainer of Linux man pages Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 

Want to help with man page maintenance?  
Grab the latest tarball at
ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/linux-local/manpages/, 
read the HOWTOHELP file and grep the source 
files for 'FIXME'.

Message #17 received at 357893-done@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Justin Pryzby <justinpryzby@users.sourceforge.net>

To: 355468-done@bugs.debian.org, 357148-done@bugs.debian.org, 357739-done@bugs.debian.org, 357893-done@bugs.debian.org

Subject: fixed in manpages 2.26-1

Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 10:22:48 -0400

Version: 2.26-1

These bugs are all reported fixed by the upstream manpages maintainer,
Michael Kerrisk.  The bug numbers and titles are:

 #355468 suggestion to unuglify execle prototype
 #357148 mmap(2):: see also::shm_open is in section 3
 #357739 Formatting error resulting in a missing word in stdin.3
 #357893 tempnam indicates that the retval (rather than errno) is EEXIST

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