Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 11 Feb 2006 19:33:59 -0800 | From | "H. Peter Anvin" <> | Subject | The naming of at()s is a difficult matter |
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I have noticed that the new ...at() system calls are named in what appears to be a completely haphazard fashion. In Unix system calls, an f- prefix means it operates on a file descriptor; the -at suffix (a prefix would have been more consistent, but oh well) similarly indicates it operates on a (directory fd, pathname) pair.
However, some system calls, in particular fchownat, futimesat, fchmodat and faccessat add the f- prefix for what appears to be absolutely no good reason. Logically, these system calls should be named chownat, utimesat, chmodat, and accessat.
I understand some of this braindamage comes from Solaris, but some of these calls do not. We should avoid it if at all possible, and I would recommend at least introducing aliases with the sane names.
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