gh-95782: Fix io.BufferedReader.tell() etc. being able to return offsets < 0 (GH-99709)

lseek() always returns 0 for character pseudo-devices like
`/dev/urandom` (for other non-regular files, e.g. `/dev/stdin`, it
always returns -1, to which CPython reacts by raising appropriate
exceptions). They are thus technically seekable despite not having seek
semantics.

When calling read() on e.g. an instance of `io.BufferedReader` that
wraps such a file, `BufferedReader` reads ahead, filling its buffer,
creating a discrepancy between the number of bytes read and the internal
`tell()` always returning 0, which previously resulted in e.g.
`BufferedReader.tell()` or `BufferedReader.seek()` being able to return
positions < 0 even though these are supposed to be always >= 0.

Invariably keep the return value non-negative by returning
max(former_return_value, 0) instead, and add some corresponding tests.

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/Lib/_pyio.py b/Lib/_pyio.py
index 8a0d0dc..a3fede6 100644
--- a/Lib/_pyio.py
+++ b/Lib/_pyio.py
@@ -1197,7 +1197,8 @@ class BufferedReader(_BufferedIOMixin):
         return written
 
     def tell(self):
-        return _BufferedIOMixin.tell(self) - len(self._read_buf) + self._read_pos
+        # GH-95782: Keep return value non-negative
+        return max(_BufferedIOMixin.tell(self) - len(self._read_buf) + self._read_pos, 0)
 
     def seek(self, pos, whence=0):
         if whence not in valid_seek_flags: