RE: RE: Re: Using backticks with (mount):

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RE: RE: RE: Re: Using backticks with (mount): by tye (Sage) on Jul 18, 2000 at 20:48 UTC
No, it isn't random. Yes, you shouldn't depend on it. In this case, I'm willing to bet that Perl has code that tries to `seek`, perhaps to more portably flush buffers. It is perfectly acceptable to try to seek and then see whehter or not it worked in order to tell if you happen to have a file handle to a stream that supports seeking. `$!` actually starts out as zero in a new process (no, I don't think this is guarenteed anywhere) but quickly gets changed when something deep in the guts of some library does something that fails. And indeterminate means it could be `undef` or "Illegal seek" or anything else.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
RE: RE: RE: Re: Using backticks with (mount): by BBQ (Curate) on Jul 18, 2000 at 17:23 UTC
Well, maybe you're right! Maybe it should... BUT! ;) If its called $OS_ERROR, one might expect it to start off undef until some OS errors actually occur. With Illegal Seek, common sense would tell me that OS errors have occured! I guess that's what confuses most people. Indeterminate should be undef, and not Illegal Seek, IMHO. #!/home/bbq/bin/perl # Trust no1!	[reply]