Nice() in Sys V.4

[Chris Torek]

In article <3424 at inews.intel.com> bhoughto at nevin.intel.com
(Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>It's clear what is meant by what [the quoted part of the manual] said.

It is clear from the confusion over the following wording from `select'
that it is not at all clear what a `zero pointer' is:

	Any of
	.IR readfds ,
	.IR writefds ,
	and
	.I exceptfds
	may be given as zero pointers if no descriptors are of interest.

In this case `zero pointer' means *both* `a pointer to an int-0' and `a
null pointer to int'!  Both work; the latter is what the author of the
manual page intended, because the pointer-to-zero method is more
expensive (in terms of system call time) and also fails when the number
of file descriptors exceeds 32 (or more precisely, sizeof(int)*CHAR_BIT).
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Lawrence Berkeley Lab CSE/EE (+1 415 486 5427)
Berkeley, CA		Domain:	torek at ee.lbl.gov