Jack McCann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > The 'unsigned' flags argument occurred at some point during > the incorporation of the IPv6 API into the Open Group's > Networking Services issue 5.2 spec in 1999, and was propagated > from there into the posix 1003.1-2001 spec. We've been looking > back at archives to see how this change was introduced, but > have not completed the e-paper trail yet.
FWIW, I went through my collection of C808 drafts and found the `unsigned' argument appeared with the introduction of getnameinfo() in D3.0. Unfortunately no e-paper trail over here either; I've never been an XNET participant. > >From what I can tell, most implementations have implemented > type 'int' as per the RFC, including Solaris, Windows XP, AIX, > Tru64 UNIX, HP-UX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and OpenVMS. The only > implementation I have seen that uses 'unsigned int' is GNU libc, > which originally implemented using type 'int', but which changed > to 'unsigned int' in January 2001 (I speculate this was done to > align with XNS 5.2 or perhaps one of the early drafts of 1003.1-2001). > > Given the widespread implementation of 'int', I believe the > right thing to do is get the posix spec changed, and leave > rfc2553bis as is. Actually, I did switch NetBSD over to `unsigned int' the other day; however, that and the amount of prior art (my survey didn't cover quite that much) are good reasons to reconsider this (same is true for the Austin Group). > Stay tuned, Technical Corrigenda 1 (TC1) for 1003.1-2001 is > active right now, I hope to have this fixed in TC1. I didn't occur to me to look there earlier (shame on me), but I just noticed your Aardvarks on that subject; unfortunately they (XBD ERN 24, XSH ERN 22) were rejected at the May meeting. In any case, I'll be watching austin-group-l. - Klaus -------------------------------------------------------------------- IETF IPng Working Group Mailing List IPng Home Page: http://playground.sun.com/ipng FTP archive: ftp://playground.sun.com/pub/ipng Direct all administrative requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------
