Every programmer should read the source to abort() at some point in their life. • Hacker News Board

Re: Every programmer should read the source to abort() at some point in their life.

#11

Post by kenjackson » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 7:03 PM UTC

Raymond Chen wrote a classic blog post on how process exits on WinXP. But if you're a developer, know that it's not the same for Win7.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2007/05/03/23833...

Re: Every programmer should read the source to abort() at some point in their life.

#12

Post by cpeterso » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 7:04 PM UTC

For comparison, here's FreeBSD's abort():

http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/lib/libc/stdlib/abort.c?...

And GNU glibc's abort():

http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob_plain;f=stdlib...

Re: Every programmer should read the source to abort() at some point in their life.

#13

Post by cpeterso » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 7:13 PM UTC

p9idf wrote: post #10

Plan 9's abort causes an access fault, causing the current process to enter the `Broken' state. The process can then be inspected by a debugger. Pretty elegant. http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/libc/9sys/a...

Beautiful! The gurus do not disappoint.

Re: Every programmer should read the source to abort() at some point in their life.

#14

Post by ristretto » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 7:25 PM UTC

Why is the outer while(1) loop needed? Seems redundant to me.

Re: Every programmer should read the source to abort() at some point in their life.

#15

Post by ristretto » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 7:33 PM UTC

p9idf wrote: post #10

Plan 9's abort causes an access fault, causing the current process to enter the `Broken' state. The process can then be inspected by a debugger. Pretty elegant. http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/libc/9sys/a...

again, what's with the while()? even if it doesnt cause a segmentation fault, there's a chance it will evaluate to 0.

Re: Every programmer should read the source to abort() at some point in their life.

#16

Post by ars » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 7:40 PM UTC

jordanb wrote: post #4

KonradKlause wrote: post #3

glibc's abort() is even more complex: http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=stdlib/abort...

Most of the code in glibc has been heavily Dreppered.

What does Dreppered mean?

Re: Every programmer should read the source to abort() at some point in their life.

#17

Post by 1amzave » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 7:49 PM UTC

p9idf wrote: post #10

Plan 9's abort causes an access fault, causing the current process to enter the `Broken' state. The process can then be inspected by a debugger. Pretty elegant. http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/libc/9sys/a...

In practical terms, does this differ significantly from killing the process and leaving a coredump?

Re: Every programmer should read the source to abort() at some point in their life.

#18

Post by jethroalias97 » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 7:51 PM UTC

p9idf wrote: post #10

Plan 9's abort causes an access fault, causing the current process to enter the `Broken' state. The process can then be inspected by a debugger. Pretty elegant. http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/libc/9sys/a...

Very elegant, though in some cases 0x0 is addressable, in which case, the abort never happens.

Re: Every programmer should read the source to abort() at some point in their life.

#19

Post by lubutu » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 7:57 PM UTC

musl's abort() is quite elegant: http://git.etalabs.net/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=musl;a=blob;f=sr...

Re: Every programmer should read the source to abort() at some point in their life.

#20

Post by raldi » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 8:01 PM UTC

ristretto wrote: post #14

Why is the outer while(1) loop needed? Seems redundant to me.

The link specifically asks that question -- there are some good guesses in the comments.