[glibc] manual: Update compatibility note on flushing of line-oriented files
Florian Weimer
fw@sourceware.org
Wed Jan 29 12:18:46 GMT 2025
https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=glibc.git;h=32ac9f8049adc7a7b92c3f27286de745691ad233
commit 32ac9f8049adc7a7b92c3f27286de745691ad233
Author: Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>
Date: Wed Jan 29 10:28:10 2025 +0100
manual: Update compatibility note on flushing of line-oriented files
Operation systems which represent text files in a line-oriented
fashion (and not as byte streams with a character sequence reserved
for line termination) logically cannot flush a buffer without
also creating a terminated line.
Update this portability note and move it to the Binary Streams
section. Add another related compatibility concern, too.
Diff:
---
manual/stdio.texi | 18 ++++++++++++------
1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
diff --git a/manual/stdio.texi b/manual/stdio.texi
index 747b1abf45..01b9f478dd 100644
--- a/manual/stdio.texi
+++ b/manual/stdio.texi
@@ -4346,6 +4346,18 @@ fail to handle lines more than 254 characters long (including the
terminating newline character).
@cindex lines (in a text file)
+@item
+If the system does not use POSIX-style in-band signalling to indicate
+line termination, it can be impossibe to write anything to a text stream
+without adding a line terminator. As a result, flushing a text stream
+(by calling @code{fflush}, for example) may produce a logical line
+terminator even if no @code{'\n'} character was written by the program.
+
+@item
+Text files may contain lines that embed @code{'\n'} characters that are
+not treated as line terminators by the system. C programs cannot read
+such text files reliably using the @file{stdio.h} facilities.
+
@item
On some systems, text files can contain only printing characters,
horizontal tab characters, and newlines, and so text streams may not
@@ -4838,12 +4850,6 @@ currently opened.
This function is declared in the @file{stdio_ext.h} header.
@end deftypefun
-@strong{Compatibility Note:} Some brain-damaged operating systems have
-been known to be so thoroughly fixated on line-oriented input and output
-that flushing a line buffered stream causes a newline to be written!
-Fortunately, this ``feature'' seems to be becoming less common. You do
-not need to worry about this with @theglibc{}.
-
In some situations it might be useful to not flush the output pending
for a stream but instead simply forget it. If transmission is costly
and the output is not needed anymore this is valid reasoning. In this
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