On Mon, 22 Sep 2003, Hrvoje Niksic wrote:

> > I doubt any system that does not support off_t does support LFS.
> 
> As I mentioned in the first message, LFS is not the only thing you
> need large values for.  Think download quota or the sum of downloaded
> bytes.  You should be able to specify `--quota=10G' on systems without
> LFS.

 Agreed.

> As for the hassle, remember that Wget caters to systems with much less
> features than LFS on a regular basis.  For example, we suppose
> pre-ANSI C compilers, libc's without snprintf, strptime or, for that
> matter, basic C89 functions like memcpy or strstr.  So yes, I'd say
> pre-LFS systems are worth the hassle.

 Well, as always with good software we should assume a standard
environment to be the guideline on how to write code and then add specific
arrangements to deal with various shortcomings of non-standard or simply
old systems.  Autoconf has capabilities for aiding in implementing such a
setup and the shortcomings are typically handled if there's a demand only.

> Perhaps a good compromise would be to use off_t for variables whose
> 64-bitness doesn't matter without LFS, and a `large_number_t' typedef
> that points to either `double' or `long long' for others.  Since the
> others are quite rare, printing them won't be a problem in practice,
> just like it's not for VERY_LONG_TYPE right now.

 off_t *must* be used for file offsets, sizes, etc. of you want to be
sane.  For other uses, I suppose an autoconf test can be written to find
the largest available type.

> > And even if it does, it's probably not worth the hassle.  To handle
> > ordinary old systems, you just call:
> >
> > AC_CHECK_TYPE(off_t, long)
> >
> > before calling AC_SYS_LARGEFILE.
> 
> That still doesn't explain how to print off_t on systems that don't
> natively support it.  (Or that do, for that matter.)

 Sure, that's a completely independent problem.  While discovering the
proper format specifier is doable, gettextization makes its use tough.

  Maciej

-- 
+  Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland   +
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
+        e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED], PGP key available        +

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