Re: Revised statx(2) man page for review

[G. Branden Robinson]

At 2017-04-26T07:42:12+0200, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote:
> On 04/25/2017 10:06 PM, Dmitry V. Levin wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 01:14:26PM +0200, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote:
> > [...]
> >>        The file timestamps are structures of the following type:
> >>
> >>            struct statx_timestamp {
> >>                __s64 tv_sec;    /* Seconds since the Epoch (UNIX time) */
> >>                __s32 tv_nsec;   /* Nanoseconds before or since tv_sec */
> >>            };
> > 
> > Nanoseconds since tv_sec.  The "before tv_sec" is not implemented yet
> > and I hope nobody is going to implement it for the reasons I mentioned
> > in https://marc.info/?i=20170422192743.GA17005%40altlinux.org
> 
> Thanks Dmitry. Fixed.

If you give a programmer a signed type, he or she will cheerfully stuff
negative values into it, perhaps to carry out-of-band information as
with IEEE NaNs and tagged pointers.

The user should be admonished against using the full range of the type
in any case ([0, 1e9 - 1]).

Regards,
Branden

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