3 ms·

+1 on the "horrible idea" part. Thing is, the (history of the) UNIX APIs - call'em "libc" if you like - is littered with the undead corpses of horrible ideas.

by fch42 2y ago

+1 on the "horrible idea" part. Thing is, the (history of the) UNIX APIs - call'em "libc" if you like - is littered with the undead corpses of horrible ideas. Who thought that having global file write offsets are great ? Append-only writes ? Global working directories ? The ability to write the password db via putpwent() ? Modifying your own envp or argv ? Why have a horribly-scaling hack like fcntl-based file locking even in the standard ? "Today", were one to start from scratch, the userspace API of even unix-ish operating systems would be done much differently. After all, systems designers and implementors are intelligent people and learn, and there's 50y+ of history to learn from. But the warts are there, and sometimes, there to "program around" them.

Joker_vD 2y ago
Append-only writes are actually amazing, having several processes writing into the same file and have their writes interleaved instead of destroying each other is almost impossible to re-create in the user space. And I still don't understand why processes "modifying their own envp or argv" are met with such revulsion in this comment thread except from the "I dislike that on ideological grounds" reason. Now, the ability to modify envp and/or argv of other processes while those are running, yes, that's a horrible idea. But modifying your own internal process state? Oh, and fcntl file locks are horrible for the historical reasons: basically, when POSIX (or its predecessor?) were trying to decide on a portable interface, the representative of one of the vendors cobbled together this API and its implementation in a week or two, and then showed to the meeting with it. To his surprise, instead of arguing everyone else basically said "eh, looks fine", and that was it, we now have broken "why on earth does close()/fork()/exec() interact with locks like that" behaviour.
- fch42 2y ago
  I had to smirk at the sarcasm (intended or no). I merely included "processes modifying their env" amongst all these historical warts. I consider doing so as inevitably necessary as append writes, the advantages of which you aptly described. That's my opinion, underpinned by the history of those interfaces. I hope we can agree that the breakage is by-and-large in an (old, historical) interface that allows braindead usage, not in either the implementor or the user ?
pjmlp 2y ago
You can see how that would look like, done by UNIX authors themselves, by looking into Inferno and Limbo standard library. It is kind of ironic how so many stick with UNIX and C ideas as religious ideals from OS and systems programming ultimate design, while the authors moved on creating Plan 9 and Inferno, Alef and Limbo.

by fch42 2y ago

Joker_vD 2y ago

Append-only writes are actually amazing, having several processes writing into the same file and have their writes interleaved instead of destroying each other is almost impossible to re-create in the user space. And I still don't understand why processes "modifying their own envp or argv" are met with such revulsion in this comment thread except from the "I dislike that on ideological grounds" reason. Now, the ability to modify envp and/or argv of other processes while those are running, yes, that's a horrible idea. But modifying your own internal process state? Oh, and fcntl file locks are horrible for the historical reasons: basically, when POSIX (or its predecessor?) were trying to decide on a portable interface, the representative of one of the vendors cobbled together this API and its implementation in a week or two, and then showed to the meeting with it. To his surprise, instead of arguing everyone else basically said "eh, looks fine", and that was it, we now have broken "why on earth does close()/fork()/exec() interact with locks like that" behaviour.

fch42 2y ago
I had to smirk at the sarcasm (intended or no). I merely included "processes modifying their env" amongst all these historical warts. I consider doing so as inevitably necessary as append writes, the advantages of which you aptly described. That's my opinion, underpinned by the history of those interfaces. I hope we can agree that the breakage is by-and-large in an (old, historical) interface that allows braindead usage, not in either the implementor or the user ?

pjmlp 2y ago

You can see how that would look like, done by UNIX authors themselves, by looking into Inferno and Limbo standard library. It is kind of ironic how so many stick with UNIX and C ideas as religious ideals from OS and systems programming ultimate design, while the authors moved on creating Plan 9 and Inferno, Alef and Limbo.