Re: RFC 140 (v1) One Should Not Get Away With Ignoring System Call Errors

[Jarkko Hietaniemi]

On Thu, Aug 24, 2000 at 02:09:15PM -0400, Chaim Frenkel wrote:
> >>>>> "JH" == Jarkko Hietaniemi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> JH> "The first operation done on the return value of open() shall be defined()
> JH> or you shall regret your pitiful existence."? (a flag on the scalar coming
> JH> from open that makes any other op than defined() to die and defined() clears
> JH> the flag)
> 
> Ala, taint? Except the variable is tainted with death?

Yes, sort of.  "Touch me and I'll bring you down."

> Hmm, this would make two types of undef. Actually, if a callee could

(Not really undef, boolean, see Tom's reply).  But in either case not
a problem since the user should have no explicit means of telling the
kinds part nor certainly ways of changing the kind.

> But the drawback would be that the actual victim may not be the primal
> cause.
> 
>       sub foo {
>               my $fh = open(....);
>               ... Lots more code ...
>               return $fh;
>       }
> 
>       $victim = foo;
>       print $victim "I'm helpless";

Tough.

-- 
$jhi++; # http://www.iki.fi/jhi/
        # There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
        # It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen