WG15 Defect Report Ref: 9945-1-58
Topic: fseek and ESPIPE


This is an approved interpretation of 9945-1:1990.

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Last update: 1997-05-20


                                                                9945-1-90 #58

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	Topic:			fseek and ESPIPE
	Relevant Sections:	8.1


Defect Report:
-----------------------


       fseek() on a pipe or FIFO

       A question arose	during development of a	ISO/IEC 9945-1:90 test
       suite. This is related to the following assertion from Draft
       13 of POSIX 1003.3.1:

       When the	underlying open	file descriptor	references a pipe
       or FIFO,	then a call to fseek() sets errno to ESPIPE,
       returns a non-zero value	and the	value of the file pointer
       is unchanged.

       This particular issue has uncovered many	ambiguities within
       POSIX and within	many implementations. The following is a
       list of questions and some insights that	may have a bearing
       on the issue.


       (1) Is a	pipe or	FIFO a device or a special file	type?

       There seems to be some sloppy wording in	POSIX regarding
       "devices	which are incapable of seeking"	and whether these
       include pipes and FIFOs.	The definition of a device is "A
       computer	peripheral or an object	that appears to	the
       application as such" and	that of	a FIFO is "A FIFO special
       file is a type of file".	We understand from these
       definitions that	a pipe or a FIFO cannot	be classified as a
       device. If this is incorrect, then the behaviour	of fseek()
       on a pipe or FIFO is implementation defined and just about
       any behaviour is	acceptable after an attempt to perform a
       file positioning	operation on a pipe or FIFO.  We understand
       that the	behaviour of a file positioning	operation on a pipe
       or FIFO is well defined to indicate an ESPIPE error.

       (2) How does a file positioning operation on a pipe or FIFO
       affect subsequent read operations?


       POSIX states in the definition of file offset "There is no
       file offset specified for a pipe	or FIFO". In tests for
       lseek() this has	been understood	by the various test suite
       developers to mean that subsequent reads	from the pipe or
       FIFO are	unaffected by the attempted lseek(), and this test
       has not given any problems.

       POSIX.3.1 Draft 13 has extrapolated this	text for lseek()
       into the	equivalent assertion for fseek(). This
       extrapolation has a further problem in that a stream does
       not have	file offset but	has a file-position indicator. So
       does the	POSIX.3.1 assertion really refer to the	file
       position	indicator or to	the file pointer. The X/Open
       ISO/IEC 9945-1:90 test suite understands this statement	to be the
       equivalent of the statement for lseek(),	in that	subsequent
       reads from the stream are unaffected by the attempted
       fseek().	This test, however, is exhibiting problems and is
       the subject for this interpretation.

       (3) Could the assertion be refering to the underlying file
       descriptor?

       If this were the	case, then it would be necessary to access
       the pipe	and FIFO both from a stream (to	undertake the
       fseek())	and from a file	descriptor (to undertake the
       read()) to ensure that data loss	did not	occur at the file
       descriptor level. Unfortunately,	the synchronisation rules
       for file	handles	does not provide a mechanism for handing
       off file	handles	for buffered pipes. This makes it
       impossible to produce a POSIX conforming	application to test
       this understanding of the assertion, though this	doesn't
       seem to deter all test suite authors! The fact that such	an
       assertion results in a pass is not entirely a surprise and
       only serves to prove how	well behaved implementations are
       when the	behavior is undefined.

       (4) Could the assertion be refering to the continued ability
       to read data from the stream without any	side-effects?

       The X/Open  ISO/IEC 9945-1:90 test suite believes this to be the
       case. While it is accepted that the POSIX does not
       explicitly state	that this is the case, it seems	valid to
       argue that side-effects that exhibit data loss after an
       error condition has been	raised should be documented. This
       data loss seems particularly dangerous since there is no
       means of	recovery once an application has erroneously
       undertaken an fseek() on	a stream. However, these arguments
       have to be balanced against the fact that there is no
       explicit	mention	in the POSIX and in such cases the
       implementation could be argued to have a	degree of freedom.


       The X/Open proposed resolution is:

       An fseek() on a pipe or FIFO should return ESPIPE and
       results in undefined behaviour to the stdio stream.


WG15 response for ISO/IEC 9945-1:1990 (IEEE Std 1003.1-1990)
-----------------------------------


An fseek() on a pipe or FIFO need not return an error. If the fseek()
detects the error, then it must fail with errno set to ESPIPE.
The POSIX.1 standard does not specify the state of the stream after
such an error occurs.

The language in POSIX.1 does not support the cited assertion from 13210

The language in POSIX.1 could be clearer, and this concern
over clarity has been forwarded to the sponsors.

Rationale for Interpretation:
-----------------------------
None.
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