[boost] Re: Boost policy on relying on std library implementationdefined behaviour

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-03-25 12:47:18

"Jonathan Turkanis" <technews_at_[hidden]> wrote in message 
news:d1v087$6r0$1_at_sea.gmane.org...
> Hi All,
>
> Is there a reason to avoid providing a uniform interface to
> implementation-defined standard library features?
>
> One of the most often heard complaints about the standard iostreams 
> library is
> that there is no portable way to seek within a file stream using large 
> (64-bit)
> offsets.

I really want to see this fixed in the standard library. Any interest in 
getting a proposal together?

It seems to me the first step is to fix the <cstdio> stuff inherited from 
the C library. An easy way to do that is to propose the addition of fseeko 
and ftello functions. They are already provided on Solaris, FreeBSD, HP-UX, 
NetBSD, OpenBSD, and HP/Compaq/DEC Alpha OSF/1. SGI IRIX offers the same 
functionality, but named fseek64() and ftell64(). Apparently Linux is the 
only weak spot in the POSIX world. The functionality is trivial to provide 
under modern flavors of Windows. (Thanks to Nelson Beebe for survey of POSIX 
practice.)

I haven't given much thought to changes that would be required for iostreams 
yet.

--Beman