Re: RFD: x32 ABI system call numbers

[H. Peter Anvin]

On 08/31/2011 10:19 AM, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> I think tv_nsec was just overlooked, and people thought "it has no
> legacy users that were 'int', so we'll just leave it at 'long', which
> is guaranteed to be enough for nanoseconds that only needs a range of
> 32 bits".
> 
> In contrast, tv_usec probably *does* have legacy users that are "int".
> 
> So POSIX almost certainly only looked backwards, and never thought
> about users who would need to make it "long long" for compatibility
> reasons.
> 
> The fact that *every*other*related*field* in POSIX/SuS has a typedef
> exactly for these kinds of reasons just shows how stupid that "long
> tv_nsec" thing is.
> 
> I suspect that on Linux we can just say "tv_nsec" is suseconds_t too.
> Then we can make time_t and suseconds_t just match, and be "__s64" on
> all new platforms.
> 

Let me see if I can raise this with the POSIX committee.

	-hpa


-- 
H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center
I work for Intel.  I don't speak on their behalf.

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/