From 6c7a46a2f012a5082bcac325e4cae58a9aadb032 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Fred Drake Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2000 20:53:51 +0000 Subject: Rob Hooft : Description of fcntl(): Added description of what can go wrong. --- Doc/lib/libfcntl.tex | 10 ++++++++-- 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/Doc/lib/libfcntl.tex b/Doc/lib/libfcntl.tex index ea17665..bf4f375 100644 --- a/Doc/lib/libfcntl.tex +++ b/Doc/lib/libfcntl.tex @@ -30,8 +30,14 @@ The module defines the following functions: structure, e.g.\ created by \function{struct.pack()}. The binary data is copied to a buffer whose address is passed to the C \cfunction{fcntl()} call. The return value after a successful call - is the contents of the buffer, converted to a string object. In - case the \cfunction{fcntl()} fails, an \exception{IOError} is + is the contents of the buffer, converted to a string object. The length + of the returned string will be the same as the length of the \var{arg} + argument. This is limited to 1024 bytes. If the information returned + in the buffer by the operating system is larger than 1024 bytes, + this is most likely to result in a segmentation violation or a more + subtle data corruption. + + If the \cfunction{fcntl()} fails, an \exception{IOError} is raised. \end{funcdesc} -- cgit v0.12