[open-source] Re: Wish for 2002 ...

[Thomas Bushnell, BSG]

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com> writes:

> On 10 Jan 2002, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> >
> > However, it is.  And unless the glibc maintainers are willing to patch
> > all the programs that use it, those programs are currently not
> > portable.
> 
> You're saying: other people did stupid choices, and glibc should make
> stupid choices of its own to cover for those other people?

Yes, that's exactly right.

If we followed the rule that we should never add stupid functions to
glibc just because other people made stupid decisions about them, then
we would punt a lot of stupid functions that exist only because Posix
or X/Open asked for them.  But instead, our goal is to provide even
stupid functions.

> More importantly, even _if_ glibc were to make that choice, those stupid
> programs would STILL not be portable.

But, they would run better on GNU/Linux systems, which is the whole
reason for having string functions in glibc in the first place.

Thomas