Interpretations

Answering questions that may arise related to the meaning of portions of an IEEE standard concerning specific applications.

IEEE Standards Interpretation for IEEE Std 1003.1™-1990 IEEE Standard for Information Technology--Portable Operating System Interfaces (POSIX®)

Copyright © 2001 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. 3 Park Avenue New York, New York 10016-5997 USA All Rights Reserved.

Interpretations are issued to explain and clarify the intent of a standard and do not constitute an alteration to the original standard. In addition, interpretations are not intended to supply consulting information. Permission is hereby granted to download and print one copy of this document. Individuals seeking permission to reproduce and/or distribute this document in its entirety or portions of this document must contact the IEEE Standards Department for the appropriate license. Use of the information contained in this document is at your own risk.

IEEE Standards Department Copyrights and Permissions 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, New Jersey 08855-1331, USA

Interpretation Request #118
Topic: aio_fsync Relevant Sections: 6.7.9.2 Lines 1252-1265 PASC

This paragraph describes the aiocbp structure and its uses, in apparently general terms. It is unclear whether this paragraph is meant for use in all of the APIs in which aiocbp is used, or only aio_fsync(). What is unclear in particular, are the sentences, "The aio_sigevent member shall determine the asynchronous notification to occur as specified in 3.3.1.2 when all operations have achieved synchronous I/O completion. All other members of the structure referenced by aiocbp are ignored."

1. Does this apply to all of the APIs? It would make implementation pretty difficult if we can't use the rest of the structure.
2. Does this sentence apply only to aio_fsync(), since the paragraph is in 6.7.9 and not in a more general section?
3. Does it apply to aio_error() and aio_return()?

Interpretation Response
No this sentence applies only to aio_fsync().

Rationale for Interpretation
For this function only, only the aio_fildes and aio_sigevent fields of the AIO control block are used; the rest are ignored since no seeking , (specific) writing, or reading takes place in this operation. (source: programming for the real word, POSIX.4, Gallmeister, 1995) Forwarded to Interpretations group: 31 Oct 2000 Proposed resolution: 15 Feb 2001 Finalized: 15 Mar 2001