0000150: Unix.write loops forever

Notes
(0002133) administrator (administrator) 2000-07-25 17:34	Hi Georges, > Problems: > On Solaris, writing on a raw device beyond its capacity hangs the process. > Internal Reason: > 1) Writing on a raw device beyond its capacity returns 0 (with no error) on > Solaris. This is unfortunate, because it doesn't conform with the Single Unix Specification (Unix98): write() should either return a number > 0 if some bytes were written, or the ENOSPC error otherwise. This said, raw disk partitions aren't explicitly covered by the spec, so... > The easiest fix would be to suppress the loop, although it might > possibly break some existing code relying on the "atomicity" of the > write (Is such a code exist? this is not provided by Unix...). The main problem is that Unix.write is declared as returning "unit" rather than "int", so the application wouldn't be informed of a short write. The reason for this and for the loop was to simplify the application, which doesn't have to check for short writes. On the other hand, it's questionable, since when the application gets an ENOSPC error, it doesn't know whether some bytes have been written or not. Thanks for the bug report. I don't promise to fix it immediately, but I'll keep it in mind. - Xavier Leroy

(0002134) administrator (administrator) 2000-07-25 17:36	Solaris bug (at least w.r.t. the Single Unix Specification). Still, the type of Unix.write is questionable.

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