NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/comp/unix/aix/9108

Text File | 1992-08-26 | 2.0 KB | 40 lines

Newsgroups: comp.unix.aix
Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!torn!watserv2.uwaterloo.ca!watmath!mskucher
From: [e-mail] (Murray S. Kucherawy [MFCF])
Subject: Re: Using getgroupattr()
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Math Faculty Computing Facility, University of Waterloo, Canada
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 18:06:02 GMT
Lines: 29

[e-mail] (John F Haugh II) writes:
>[e-mail] (Murray S. Kucherawy [MFCF]) writes:
>>The man page for getgroupattr() says that calling the routine and requesting
>>the group's users will return "a list of NULL terminated character strings.
>>The list itself is NULL terminated."  I'd have thought that invoking this:
>
>The pointer that you are getting back points to a string like this
>
>    "user1\0user2\0user3\0user4\0\0"
>
>So, you are seeing the first user in the first pointed to location.  The
>second character pointer in your array has trash in it because the second
>user isn't pointed to by that array element, but instead is found by
>skipping past the first NUL character.

The man page for getgroupattr() says that I will get back "a list of NULL
terminated character strings.  The list itself is NULL terminated."
That sounds to me a lot more like a vector of char pointers, something like
argv, or something else of that nature, NOT a single string with nulls in it
and two nulls at the end of it.

Perhaps the man pages should be made more clear in this case, and in fact
in many man pages related to getgroupattr() and getuserattr().

-- Murray S. Kucherawy ----------------------------------------+--------------
Software Systems Co-op, Math Faculty Computing Facility [MFCF] | This is a
University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada                        | machine that
E-mail: mskucherawy@{math,watdragon}.UWaterloo.ca              | goes PING!
---------------------------------------------------------------+--------------