OpenVMS VAXACRT09_061 V5.5-2 through V6.1 DEC C RTL ECO Summary
NOTE: An OpenVMS saveset or PCSI installation file is stored
on the Internet in a self-expanding compressed file.
The name of the compressed file will be kit_name-dcx_vaxexe
for OpenVMS VAX or kit_name-dcx_axpexe for OpenVMS Alpha.
Once the file is copied to your system, it can be expanded
by typing RUN compressed_file. The resultant file will
be the OpenVMS saveset or PCSI installation file which
can be used to install the ECO.
Copyright (c) Digital Equipment Corporation 1996, 1997. All rights reserved.
PRODUCT: OpenVMS VAX
COMPONENT: DEC C RTL - DECC$SHR.EXE
DECCCURSE.OLB
DECCRTL.OLB
DECCRTLG.OLB
VAXC2DECC.EXE
VAXCG2DECC.EXE
SOURCE: Digital Equipment Corporation
ECO INFORMATION:
ECO Kit Name: VAXACRT09_061
ECO Kits Superseded by This ECO Kit: VAXACRT08_061
VAXACRT07_061
VAXACRT06_061
VAXACRT05_061
VAXACRT03_061
VAXACRT02_061
VAXACRT01_061
ECO Kit Approximate Size: 3040 Blocks
Kit Applies To: OpenVMS VAX V5.5-2, V5.5-2H4, V5.5-2HF, V6.0, V6.1
System/Cluster Reboot Necessary: Yes
Installation Rating: 3 - To be installed on all systems running
the listed versions of OpenVMS which
are experiencing the problems described.
NOTE: In order to receive the full fixes listed in this kit,
the following remedial kits also need to be installed:
None
ECO KIT SUMMARY:
An ECO kit exists for the DEC C RTL on OpenVMS VAX V5.5-2 through V6.1.
This kit addresses the following problems:
Problems Addressed in the VAXACRT09_061 Kit:
o An ISV (Internet Service Provider) reports that extra
characters are seen on occasion when using a subprocess which sends
data back to the parent process using a mailbox.
o A case was found where the fseek function failed, correctly returned
a -1 value, but failed to set errno properly.
Problems Addressed in the VAXACRT08_061 Kit:
o Extra characters may be written to stdout under the conditions
that the application is reading from stdin and it is not a terminal.
The extra characters appear random in the output, but in fact are
written each time a new record is read from stdin.
o An application which closes either stdin, stdout, or stderr, and
then reopens it using the dup function may not have the file
actually closed if I/O is not done using the file descriptor. A
workaround is to force I/O on the file by using a function call such
as sync or flush.
Problems Addressed in the VAXACRT07_061 Kit:
o The qsort function no longer access violates when sorting a large
number of records. This was demonstrated by sorting 1966079 records
whose values were 1 through 1966079. The qsort function can now
sort the maximum number of records.
o The DEC C Runtime Library had previously added the ability for users
to define the logical name DECC$DEFAULT_LRL to change the default
longest record length value on stream files. A problem existed such
that defining this logical name to zero resulted in files which had
fixed length records instead of stream_lf records.
Problems Addressed in the VAXACRT06_061 Kit:
o The lseek function may position incorrectly when given the SEEK_END
option. Typically this occurs when the internal buffer is full and
the last operation done to the file is flush or sync.
o Since changing the default LRL value for stream files from 0 to
32767, we've been informed that this change has a dramatic affect on
sort times and workfile size. We now look for a logical
DECC$DEFAULT_LRL for this value, using 32767 if not defined.
Problems Addressed in the VAXACRT05_061 Kit:
o The DEC C RTL routine chdir fails when passed a logical search list.
o In the DSNlink and DIA C database, there is an article on how to
implement non-blocking pipes under OpenVMS. The article title is:
Example-C Implementing Non-Blocking Pipes Using VAX C RTL
This example fails under OpenVMS V6.2 and was introduced in an
earlier ECO kit for OpenVMS V6.1.
o The function ungetc stopped working in OpenVMS V6.1 for both
variable and fixed length records.
o Using VAXC, the curses code fragment:
wmove(win, 1, 2); wprintw(win, "First line" );
wmove(win, 2, 2); wprintw(win, "Second line");
produces the output:
C First line
Second Line
Using the compatible VMS Curses package provided by DECC on both VAX
and Alpha, the results are:
First lineSecond Line
o Issuing a call to getenv("TERM") would fail when used from a VT500
class terminal.
o If you were to run a program containing the following fragment on
OpenVMS V6.1, you would notice one file was created (test.file). A
second run would append to the file. If you run it on OpenVMS V6.2,
it created a new file every time. It did not append.
fp = fopen("TEST", "a", "dna=SYS$DISK:[].file");
o On slow systems, the return value from sleep (which is defined to be
how much of the time we did not sleep) could be a negative number if
we slept too long.
o Two locks may be obtained during I/O operations. In the fclose
function, lock A was obtained before lock B. In all other CRTL
functions lock B was obtained before lock A. Under adverse
conditions, deadlock results.
o When using fflush/fsynch with DEC C the "stdout" buffer is NOT
flushed at the time you call these RTLs. Eventually the buffers do
get flushed, but with VAX C the buffer is flushed using the same
RTLs.
o Positioning to the end of file using the fseek function with the
SEEK_SET option would no longer succeed if the user did not open the
file with write.
o Bizarre I/O behavior when the I/O operation involved positioning to
the last block in the file.
o A regression was introduced in OpenVMS V6.1 whereby the scanw and
wscanw routines always access violate.
o When reading zero length records from a Fortran carriage control
record file. The result is that the carriage control from the
previous read is used and may result in an access violation
dereferencing the data in the buffer.
o The read function fails to load characters that have been used in
calls to the ungetc function.
Problems Addressed in the VAXACRT02_061 Kit:
o The functions fprintf & printf truncate the output when more than
one element is specified in the I/O list and the number of
characters written for a particular element exceeds 2048 characters.
For example:
char buffer[2048]; printf("++++%s", buffer);
In this particular case the output will be "++++" plus the first
2044 characters from "buffer". Remove the "++++" and all 2048
characters from "buffer" are output. If the "buffer" is larger than
2048 characters, then the same is true except that characters 1-2044
will be output, characters 2045-2048 will be truncated and then
characters 2049 -> end-of-buffer will be output.
o When the following code section is used in a signal handler, two
control-c characters abort the program.
void signal_handler (int sig) { signal (SIGINT, SIG_IGN); /*
Ignore control-c characters */ << do actual work >>
}
Problems Addressed in the VAXACRT01_061 Kit:
o The functions which write data to a file corrupt the data in the
file if an "exceeded disk quota" error occurs during the write
operation.
o The behavior of passing negated scansets to the scanf function was
changed such that a "-" between two characters where the first is
less than the second is treated as a range character set.
o The function getenv was enhanced to perform a case insensitive
lookup if the case sensitive lookup fails.
o The functions which read data from files would fail to read lines
from an RMS "variable with fixed control" file with print format
carriage control attributes. This typically occurred if the lines
were double spaced.
o Calls to the fwrite function without a trailing n resulted in
implied newlines being written if the following conditions applied:
the file was an RMS sequential variable with fixed control file with
print format carriage control attributes.
o The functions close and fclose did not properly set the value of
vaxc$errno when the close operation failed.
o The function ftell has been corrected to take into account that an
unget character may exist. If such a character exists, the file
position is returned as the position of this character in the file;
as if the character has not yet been read.
o When working with remotely accessed files via DECnet, the function
fseek would fail to position correctly in files containing fixed
length records. Also, the function ftell would report an incorrect
position.
o A process would terminate after the second CTRL-C (CONTROL C)
regardless of the application re-establishing SIGINT processing.
The SIGINT handling now works as documented.
o The file writing functions would lose characters when writing to a
file whose attributes include carriage return carriage control and
whose record size is the size of the I/O buffer being used by the
RTL. Typically this buffer size is a power of 2 greater than 8192.
o In V6.1 and earlier releases, if the buffer argument to setvbuf was
NULL, then setvbuf would reset the buffer to the one allocated by
the DEC C RTL when the file was opened. New behavior is that if a
NULL buffer argument is passed, and the size argument is larger than
the buffer allocated by the RTL when the file was opened, then
setvbuf will allocate a buffer equal to the specified size, and use
that as the file buffer.
o The functions stat and fstat would fail to return any information
about a remote file that was already opened for exclusive access.
o The fclose function has been corrected to properly deallocate
channels used when the user has opened the NULL device.
o The printf function was enhanced to print "(null)" when passed a
null pointer. Prior to this, the DEC C RTL would issue an access
violation error.
o The RTL now properly parses RMS options of the form "DNA=". This
change was made for the benefit of applications migrating from VAX C
to DEC C.
o The function puts now correctly can write a string whose length
exceeds 32,767 bytes. Prior to this correction, the function would
report that it succeeded, while it actually had failed.
The function puts has been corrected such that when strings are
written whose length exceeds 8131 bytes, typing the file no longer
results in the error message:
"SYSTEM-F-EXQUOTA, process quota exceeded"
o The function read no longer adds an extra NULL character to the end
of a record when the record attribute is Fortran Carriage Control
and the carriage control character is NULL. The new behavior is now
compatible with VAX C, which simply removes the carriage control
character.
o A problem was fixed when reading fixed length record files using a
combination of 'lseek' and 'read' which behaved correctly using the
VAX C product.
o The function fseek no longer fails when passed a direction of
SEEK_END and a non-zero offset argument. This correction applies to
files with fixed length records.
o The function read has been corrected to allow reading the 'n'
character from a DECnet task to task network device.
o The function system may now be used from a signal handler which has
been triggered by the SIGALRM function. Prior to this correction,
this combination of calls resulted in the process issuing the system
call hanging.
o The function getname no longer access violates if called prior to a
CLI being established for the process.
o The function pipe no longer fails if the flags O_RDWR, O_RDONLY or
O_WRONLY are specified. These flags are now ignored by the
function.
o For child processes in which the parent has used the dup function to
redefine file descriptor zero to be a pipe, SYS$ERROR is no longer
defined to be the NLA0 device.
o A correction has been made to the RTL such that the I/O system
properly inherits a record attribute of none when a previous version
of the file had an undefined record format. Prior to this
correction, the newly created file would be created with carriage
return record attributes.
The functions fopen, open, and creat have been corrected to allow
the RMS option "rat=none" to override the record attributes of the
previous version of the file.
The function ftell now correctly reports the file position for files
which have an undefined record format. This includes when the file
is positioned at the end of the file.
o Depending upon previous usages of virtual memory, the first call to
the alarm function in an application sometimes would return a
non-zero value. Also, the first call to the strtok function, when
passed NULL as the first argument, would sometimes return a non-zero
value.
o The RTL no longer ignores the Maximum Record Size (mrs) value when
provided by the caller. Prior to this correction, stream files
would always be created with a maximum record size of 32767. For
example, with the statement:
fp = fopen("test.dat","w","mrs=512");
the mrs value is now correctly set to 512 instead of the incorrect
behavior of setting it to 32767.
o The function chdir has been corrected to behave as documented. A
problem was fixed where changing the directory was permanent even if
the parameter was passed specifying this change to be temporary.
o If a program calls fclose(fp) to close the disk file associated with
the "FILE *" fp, and the disk is full, the fclose call fails. At
this point the file cannot be deleted from the disk because the
program still has it open; but the program cannot close it. As a
result the file cannot be deleted for as long as the program is
running.
o The lseek function no longer fails to write to the correct block if
the file does not exist and the write is 1024 bytes.
o The function strtok no longer stops on 0Xff characters found in the
users buffer unless that character is explicitly passed as a token
separator.
o The function access no longer fails when the filename passed
contains a search list logical name whose translation spans multiple
physical devices.
o The DEC C RTL no longer fails to close stdin, stdout, and stderr if
called from a language other than C. Prior to this correction, the
results were either an incomplete or nonexistent file. This problem
had been corrected in OpenVMS AXP V6.1 and is now corrected on both
platforms.
o The printf function, using the %g format specifier, no longer
displays a colon instead of a number. For example, the function
using a format specifier "%#13.6g" with a value of "314109.968750"
would result in the incorrect display of "31410:". It now correctly
displays the value "314110".
o The function decc$set_reentrancy now allows the first call to lower
the reentrancy level.
o While the documentation had indicated that signals were reset to
SIG_DFL after they are caught, this was not true for SIGINT. Prior
to this correction, raising the signal a second time would result in
the process exiting with a status message instead of exiting
quietly.
o A successful call to a socket function would inadvertently reset the
value of errno to zero, which is not permitted by the ANSI standard.
o The curses function clrtobot no longer incorrectly clears the entire
screen. It now correctly clears only from the cursor position to
the end of the screen.
o The value of the environment name "TERM", obtained by calling the
getenv function, has been corrected to return values of the form
"vt300-80", as opposed to the incorrect value of the form "USER=ME".
o The functions stat and fstat would not work with disks which have
allocation classes.
o The RTL no longer sets errno as a side effect of successfully
creating a file.
o The functions fwrite, fputs, and puts now properly clear the unget
character buffer.
o The DEC C RTL has been corrected to properly deal with EOF when
reading and writing to pipes. The correct behavior is found in the
POSIX IEEE Standard 1003.1-1988, Section 6.4.1.2, which states that
an EOF is written to a pipe only when no writers are left. Before
implementing the POSIX behavior, the DEC C RTL was writing an EOF to
a pipe every time a writer closed a pipe.
The DEC C RTL no longer incorrectly writes an EOF to a pipe when the
user issues a write of zero bytes. The corrected behavior now conforms
to the POSIX IEEE Standard 1003.1-1988, Section 6.4.1.2, which
states that writing zero bytes to a file has no effect.
o The close function has been corrected to free the file descriptor
associated with a socket, even if an error occurs during the
operation.
o The signal function has been corrected to continue ignoring the
SIGINT signal value, even after one has been received.
INSTALLATION NOTES:
In order for the corrections in this kit to take effect, the system must
be rebooted. If the system is a member of a VMScluster, the entire
cluster should be rebooted.
This patch can be found at any of these sites:
Colorado Site
Georgia Site
Files on this server are as follows:
vaxacrt09_061.README
vaxacrt09_061.CHKSUM
vaxacrt09_061.CVRLET_TXT
vaxacrt09_061.a-dcx_vaxexe
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