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1.2.2.4 Other Safety Remarks

Additional keywords may be attached to functions, indicating features that do not make a function unsafe to call, but that may need to be taken into account in certain classes of programs:

• locale

  Functions annotated with locale as an MT-Safety issue read from the locale object without any form of synchronization. Functions annotated with locale called concurrently with locale changes may behave in ways that do not correspond to any of the locales active during their execution, but an unpredictable mix thereof.

  We do not mark these functions as MT- or AS-Unsafe, however, because functions that modify the locale object are marked with const:locale and regarded as unsafe. Being unsafe, the latter are not to be called when multiple threads are running or asynchronous signals are enabled, and so the locale can be considered effectively constant in these contexts, which makes the former safe.

• env

  Functions marked with env as an MT-Safety issue access the environment with getenv or similar, without any guards to ensure safety in the presence of concurrent modifications.

  We do not mark these functions as MT- or AS-Unsafe, however, because functions that modify the environment are all marked with const:env and regarded as unsafe. Being unsafe, the latter are not to be called when multiple threads are running or asynchronous signals are enabled, and so the environment can be considered effectively constant in these contexts, which makes the former safe.

• hostid

  The function marked with hostid as an MT-Safety issue reads from the system-wide data structures that hold the “host ID” of the machine. These data structures cannot generally be modified atomically. Since it is expected that the “host ID” will not normally change, the function that reads from it (gethostid) is regarded as safe, whereas the function that modifies it (sethostid) is marked with const:hostid, indicating it may require special care if it is to be called. In this specific case, the special care amounts to system-wide (not merely intra-process) coordination.

• sigintr

  Functions marked with sigintr as an MT-Safety issue access the _sigintr internal data structure without any guards to ensure safety in the presence of concurrent modifications.

  We do not mark these functions as MT- or AS-Unsafe, however, because functions that modify the this data structure are all marked with const:sigintr and regarded as unsafe. Being unsafe, the latter are not to be called when multiple threads are running or asynchronous signals are enabled, and so the data structure can be considered effectively constant in these contexts, which makes the former safe.

• fd

  Functions annotated with fd as an AC-Safety issue may leak file descriptors if asynchronous thread cancellation interrupts their execution.

  Functions that allocate or deallocate file descriptors will generally be marked as such. Even if they attempted to protect the file descriptor allocation and deallocation with cleanup regions, allocating a new descriptor and storing its number where the cleanup region could release it cannot be performed as a single atomic operation. Similarly, releasing the descriptor and taking it out of the data structure normally responsible for releasing it cannot be performed atomically. There will always be a window in which the descriptor cannot be released because it was not stored in the cleanup handler argument yet, or it was already taken out before releasing it. It cannot be taken out after release: an open descriptor could mean either that the descriptor still has to be closed, or that it already did so but the descriptor was reallocated by another thread or signal handler.

  Such leaks could be internally avoided, with some performance penalty, by temporarily disabling asynchronous thread cancellation. However, since callers of allocation or deallocation functions would have to do this themselves, to avoid the same sort of leak in their own layer, it makes more sense for the library to assume they are taking care of it than to impose a performance penalty that is redundant when the problem is solved in upper layers, and insufficient when it is not.

  This remark by itself does not cause a function to be regarded as AC-Unsafe. However, cumulative effects of such leaks may pose a problem for some programs. If this is the case, suspending asynchronous cancellation for the duration of calls to such functions is recommended.

• mem

  Functions annotated with mem as an AC-Safety issue may leak memory if asynchronous thread cancellation interrupts their execution.

  The problem is similar to that of file descriptors: there is no atomic interface to allocate memory and store its address in the argument to a cleanup handler, or to release it and remove its address from that argument, without at least temporarily disabling asynchronous cancellation, which these functions do not do.

  This remark does not by itself cause a function to be regarded as generally AC-Unsafe. However, cumulative effects of such leaks may be severe enough for some programs that disabling asynchronous cancellation for the duration of calls to such functions may be required.

• cwd

  Functions marked with cwd as an MT-Safety issue may temporarily change the current working directory during their execution, which may cause relative pathnames to be resolved in unexpected ways in other threads or within asynchronous signal or cancellation handlers.

  This is not enough of a reason to mark so-marked functions as MT- or AS-Unsafe, but when this behavior is optional (e.g., nftw with FTW_CHDIR), avoiding the option may be a good alternative to using full pathnames or file descriptor-relative (e.g. openat) system calls.

• !posix

  This remark, as an MT-, AS- or AC-Safety note to a function, indicates the safety status of the function is known to differ from the specified status in the POSIX standard. For example, POSIX does not require a function to be Safe, but our implementation is, or vice-versa.

  For the time being, the absence of this remark does not imply the safety properties we documented are identical to those mandated by POSIX for the corresponding functions.

• :identifier

  Annotations may sometimes be followed by identifiers, intended to group several functions that e.g. access the data structures in an unsafe way, as in race and const, or to provide more specific information, such as naming a signal in a function marked with sig. It is envisioned that it may be applied to lock and corrupt as well in the future.

  In most cases, the identifier will name a set of functions, but it may name global objects or function arguments, or identifiable properties or logical components associated with them, with a notation such as e.g. :buf(arg) to denote a buffer associated with the argument arg, or :tcattr(fd) to denote the terminal attributes of a file descriptor fd.

  The most common use for identifiers is to provide logical groups of functions and arguments that need to be protected by the same synchronization primitive in order to ensure safe operation in a given context.

• /condition

  Some safety annotations may be conditional, in that they only apply if a boolean expression involving arguments, global variables or even the underlying kernel evaluates to true. Such conditions as /hurd or /!linux!bsd indicate the preceding marker only applies when the underlying kernel is the HURD, or when it is neither Linux nor a BSD kernel, respectively. /!ps and /one_per_line indicate the preceding marker only applies when argument ps is NULL, or global variable one_per_line is nonzero.

  When all marks that render a function unsafe are adorned with such conditions, and none of the named conditions hold, then the function can be regarded as safe.