Re: fts(3) patch for review

Yar Tikhiy wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Our fts(3) functions and data structures suffer from too narrow
> integer types, which apparently were selected in ancient days when
> RAM was costlier than gold.  The consequences of that choice are
> illustrated by PR bin/104458.  In short, find(1) can't walk and
> rm(1) can't remove file trees an ordinary user can create.
> 
> To fix the problem, structures in <fts.h> have to be changed.  For
> my change (attached below), I chose new types using the following
> principles I believe to be well-known in the C world:
> 
> - avoid `short' unless there is a very grave reason to try to
>   save RAM -- on modern platforms using `short' results in larger
>   and slower code;
> - for object sizes, use size_t unless it's 100% certain that
>   the object will be really small (note that fts(3) can construct
>   pathnames _much_ longer than PATH_MAX for its consumers);
> - for variables than count simple, limited things like states,
>   use plain vanilla `int' as it's the type of choice in C;
> - for bit flags use u_int because signed bit-wise operations
>   are unportable in C;
> - for things that should be at least 64 bits wide, use long long
>   and not int64_t, as the latter is an optional type.

Isn't "long long" a gcc-ism, whereas int64's are portable (posix?)
standards?   I don't know what the FreeBSD policy is, but for other
projects that strive to be portable, including the use of non-gcc
compilers, "long long" is frowned upon...

Other than that, I agree with the above, except that for things
which only make sense as positive numbers, such as a count, I try
to use unsigned int.  On modern platforms there should be no speed
or RAM difference from using an int, but it makes things mildly clearer
(sometimes).

Gary

> An open question is what type to use for the level.  Since one can
> chain-mount several filesystems, theoretically the level can be
> greater than the maximum value of ino_t, which is 2^32-1.  OTOH, I
> doubt that the limit can be hit in practice, especially on 32-bit
> systems, so `long' can be a fair compromise for the level.
> 
> Comments are welcome.  Thanks!
> 
> P.S. According to my tests, the stock system tools happily build
> and run with the modified fts(3).
>