If you were designing a standard library of a high level language (like Rust, C++, etc.) what would it do if while getting the current time of day (e.g. SystemTime::now()) it encountered a failed kernel system call (e.g. to clock_gettime) and why?

What do you think the existing implementations do?

  • Return error or raise exception
  • Return 0
  • Return undefined values (like stack garbage)
  • Panic/crash/segfault
  • anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    2·
    19 days ago

    I think you should make the overwhelmingly likely case crash in a controlled way, but provide a way to handle it for people who truly want to keep going in such strange conditions.

    In rust I would panic in now(), but also provide a alternative call that returns a result named something like try_now(), similar to Vec::with_capacity and Vec::try_with_capacity.
    In languages that provide them, you could also throw a runtime exception that can be ignored and just bubbles up to main unless explicitly caught.