Re: ANSI-fy of ranlib, ruptime and rdist [patches]

[David Cuthbert <dacut@xxxxxxxxx>]

Matthew Dillon wrote:

>     My personal opinion is that we should not make coding/style decisions
>     based on what linters might complain about, because most linters are really
>     quite out of date.  Also, C is not Java.  In all the bugs I've ever found,
>     I think ignoring a return value (as the cause of a bug) falls so far down
>     in the noise that it isn't worth worrying about.

I didn't mean to argue that the style should go one way or the other; 
just pointing out the reason for the rule.  Personally, it's one that I 
often break.

However, I don't grok your "C is not Java" reasoning.  If anything, it's 
more important to check return values in C due to its lack of exceptions.

Also, while not checking a return value is usually not the cause of a 
bug, it can often provide very useful clues for the onset of a bug. 
I've had people complain, for example, that an IPC library I wrote isn't 
working properly, or that it's causing a coredump.  Upon closer 
inspection, they were ignoring the fact that an xxxConnect() call was 
returning ECONNREFUSED.

Maybe we just have sloppier programmers at work? <shrug>