David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*) on nostr

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

@David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*) 1783685378

Wow, POSIX specifies that the type of the nanoseconds field in struct timespec must be long. Did they have a competition to pick the worst possible choice for that type? It's a value that must be able to hold a (maximum of 30-bit) value from 0 to 999,999,999. So they picked a signed type that is at least 32 bits, but sometimes larger.

Andy Price · 5w

nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpqncxka2nmkqkndk4wkuf3tz3l39z9m8xax3aen3h8tvudwgjmf5mq4uv2v2 I wonder if they standardised it from implementations that decided to use -1 for "nanoseconds unsupported" or something like that.

Edwin Török · 5w

nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpqncxka2nmkqkndk4wkuf3tz3l39z9m8xax3aen3h8tvudwgjmf5mq4uv2v2 the official rationale is here: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/xrat/V4_xsh_chap01.html#tag_22_02_08. It makes sense why they picked a signed type (handling differences...