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Handling of unlikely syscall errors (programming.dev)
submitted 1 day ago by hades@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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If you were designing a standard library of a high level language (like Rust, C++, etc.) what would it do if while getting the current time of day (e.g. SystemTime::now()) it encountered a failed kernel system call (e.g. to clock_gettime) and why?

What do you think the existing implementations do?

  • Return error or raise exception
  • Return 0
  • Return undefined values (like stack garbage)
  • Panic/crash/segfault
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[-] hades@programming.dev 1 points 14 hours ago

Uninitialized automatic variables. E.g. (in C/C++):

int get_time() {
  int time;
  syscall(/* something that fails */, &time);
  return time;
}
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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