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
    • Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      19 days ago

      If it’s garbage as in a string with a bunch of information that is hard to parse, yeah, crashing without giving the caller a way to avoid it might be worse. But what is exactly this garbage and in what cases are you considering returning it at all?

      • hades@programming.devOP
        1·
        19 days ago

        Uninitialized automatic variables. E.g. (in C/C++):

        int get_time() {
  int time;
  syscall(/* something that fails */, &time);
  return time;
}