strerror thread safe version

I paid a big price debugging core dumps to figure out that AIX
strerror is not thread safe (as it is on Solaris and HPUX).

Does anyone have any suggestion how to replace strerror() with some
code that is thread safe? Having a mutex around it sounds like the
last option because it would be hard to share the same mutex in all
different shared libraries that my product consists of.

Thanks,
Vlad

vlada1703@yahoo.com (Vlada) writes:

> I paid a big price debugging core dumps to figure out that AIX
> strerror is not thread safe (as it is on Solaris and HPUX).

IBM's documentation page for strerror() says at the beginning:

Attention: Do not use the strerror subroutine in a multithreaded
environment.

> Does anyone have any suggestion how to replace strerror() with some
> code that is thread safe?

Sure, "man strerror_r"

Cheers,
--
In order to understand recursion you must first understand recursion.
Remove /-nsp/ for email.

man strerror_r is the first command that I tried, but this man page
does not exist on any of my 5 different AIX boxes. My search on the
net failed, too.

Anyway, strerror_r function is defined in libc_r and strings.h defines
function as:

# ifdef _THREAD_SAFE
extern int strerror_r(int, char *, int);
# endif /* _THREAD_SAFE */

I guess the first arg is errno, second is caller's buffer and the
third is the max buffer size.
I'm not sure what does the function returns.

I would really appreciate if someone sends me the copy of strerror_r
AIX man page.
Thanks a lot,
Vlad


Paul Pluzhnikov <ppluzhnikov-nsp@charter.net> wrote in message news:<m3ekkk5zs8.fsf@salmon.parasoft.com>...
> vlada1703@yahoo.com (Vlada) writes:
>
> > I paid a big price debugging core dumps to figure out that AIX
> > strerror is not thread safe (as it is on Solaris and HPUX).
>
> IBM's documentation page for strerror() says at the beginning:
>
> Attention: Do not use the strerror subroutine in a multithreaded
> environment.
>
> > Does anyone have any suggestion how to replace strerror() with some
> > code that is thread safe?
>
> Sure, "man strerror_r"
>
> Cheers,

Vlada wrote:

> man strerror_r is the first command that I tried, but this man page
> does not exist on any of my 5 different AIX boxes. My search on the
> net failed, too.
>
> I would really appreciate if someone sends me the copy of strerror_r
> AIX man page.

There doesn't appear to be a man page (i.e. it's not documented
in the 5.2 pubs). Someone should complain about that.

The first arg is the error number, the 2nd a pointer to
a buffer, the third the length of said buffer. Max size
appears to be NL_TEXTMAX. If the error number is invalid,
you get EINVAL as the return value; if the buffer is
too small to hold the message, you get ERANGE as the
return value. Some invalid arguments might get you
a -1 return value. You get a zero on success.

--
Gary R. Hook
__________________________________________________ ______________________
Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit