RE: [MiNT] What's in, what's out?

["Konrad M. Kokoszkiewicz" <draco@obta.uw.edu.pl>]

> > I don't know where this superstition came from, but Ssystem(S_GETxxx)
> > functions NEVER RETURN ANY ERROR, so there's no "EINVAL" to be detected.
> > If one wants to be sure these functions are present, there's a defined way
> > to check it (please READ the doc).
> 
> OK, sorry, I didn't check (somebody mentioned this as a problem in a
> newsgroup).
> 
> So, it is usable, but it requires keeping a flag, or doing a version check
> every time. Probably not such a big issue if you move it into a library
> function.

Yes:

short ssystem;

	...
	ssystem = (Ssystem(-1, 0, 0) == E_OK);
	...
	if (ssystem)
		something();
	else
		something_else();


> Generally I'd like to repeat that mixing success/error codes with return
> values almost always leads to confusion (like 16-bite negative return values
> from Fopen(), or the return value of Fseek() on a file between 2 GB and 4
> GB), and so on...

Well, the 16-bit Fopen() handles come probably from the fact that GEMDOS
was originally developed for a 16-bit system. Yet Falcon XBIOS functions -
like Vgetmonitor() for example - return short error codes, instead of
expected (intuitionally, not after reading docs) long. I agree that
different meaning (and size) of the return value for different calls *may*
be confusing, yes. 

--
Konrad M.Kokoszkiewicz
|mail: draco@atari.org                  |  Atari Falcon030 user   |
|http://www.obta.uw.edu.pl/~draco/      | Moderator gregis LATINE |
|http://draco.atari.org                 |       (loquentium)      |

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