[Courses] Re: [C] A clarification on fflush(stderr)

[Anand R]

Hey thanks so much Malcolm and Laurel. This is something really good and
something that we can discuss. I read something in a Programmers manual for
I/O. And this is what I found:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>TEXT BEGINS HERE>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
9.2.5.1    Input/Output
The standard I/O library provided to analysis routines does not
automatically flush and close streams when the instrumented program
terminates, so the analysis code must flush or close them explicitly when
all output has been completed. Also, the stdout and stderr streams that are
provided to analysis routines will be closed when the application calls
exit(), so analysis code may need to duplicate one or both of these streams
if they need to be used after application exit (for example, in a
ProgramAfter or ObjAfter analysis routine -- see AddCallProto(5)). 

For output to stderr (or a duplicate of stderr) to appear immediately,
analysis code should call setbuf(stream,NULL) to make the stream unbuffered
or call fflush after each set of fprintf calls. Similarly, analysis routines
using C++ streams can call cerr.flush(). 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>TEXT ENDS HERE>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

And this is what I read in Turbo C help

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>TEXT BEGINS HERE>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
fflush                           <STDIO.H>
 Flushes a stream
 
 Declaration:  int fflush(FILE *stream);
 
 Remarks:
If the given stream has buffered output, fflush writes the output for stream
to the associated file.
 
The stream remains open after fflush has executed. fflush has no effect on
an unbuffered stream.
 
 Return Value
  þ On success, returns 0
  þ On error, returns EOF
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>TEXT ENDS HERE>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Others: What is your opinion about flushing stderr?? I have seen Stevens do
it. I have seen Hobbit do it. And many more..Could there be something more
to this, than just habit !!

Mary: Please advise. How do we resolve this dilemma??

Thanks,
Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: Laurel Fan [mailto:laurel at sdf.lonestar.org]
Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2002 12:57 AM
To: 'courses at linuxchix.org'
Subject: Re: [Courses] Re: [C] A clarification on fflush(stderr)


On Wed, Aug 07, 2002 at 11:52:15AM -0400, Malcolm-Rannirl wrote:
> On Wednesday 07 August 2002 02:31 am, Anand R wrote:
> 
> > 	Just a small doubt. I have seen many flushing stderr in their code.
> > Why is it necessary to flush stderr?? A small code example below:
> 
> One I can actually answer. :)
> 
> When you write to stderr (or any other file), the output is buffered by
the 
> OS, because it's not very efficient to write everything to disk
immediately. 
> Unfortunately, if your program (or the OS, as I've had happen with
Windows) 
> crashes then those buffers die with it and anything in them is lost. 

Actually, I believe every output stream/file _except_ for stderr is
buffered by default (in C using stdio).  Therefore stderr is the only
stream that you _don't_ need to flush, which is one reason why stderr
is a good place to put errors.  If you see fflush(stderr), it's
probably from habit (and it won't do any harm).  (Of course, you can
make stderr buffered, or make anything else unbuffered, see manpage
for setbuf).

-- 
laurel at sdf.lonestar.org
http://dreadnought.gorgorg.org