Re: [PATCH] man/man2/getdents.2: Fix incorrect argument type
From: Mark Harris <hidden>
Date: 2026-04-04 21:53:21
vursc wrote:
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
The count argument of getdents64 is an unsigned int; see SYSCALL_DEFINE3(getdents64, ...) in linux/fs/readdir.c. Signed-off-by: vursc <redacted> --- man/man2/getdents.2 | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)diff --git a/man/man2/getdents.2 b/man/man2/getdents.2 index 8c5bbebbc..3890943ee 100644 --- a/man/man2/getdents.2 +++ b/man/man2/getdents.2@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ Standard C library .B #include <dirent.h> .P .BR "ssize_t getdents64(" "size_t count;" -.BI " int " fd ", void " dirp [ count "], size_t " count ); +.BI " int " fd ", void " dirp [ count "], unsigned int " count );
The third argument of the function has type size_t in glibc (https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/getdents64.c;hb=HEAD) and musl (https://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/tree/src/linux/getdents.c). According to intro(2): "the manual pages in Section 2 generally try to note the details of both the (usually GNU) C library API interface and the raw system call. Most commonly, the main DESCRIPTION will focus on the C library interface, and differences for the system call are covered in the NOTES section." So rather than changing the function prototype, adding a note to the NOTES section may be more appropriate. That said, the DESCRIPTION section claims, "This page documents the bare kernel system call interfaces", so that should be corrected as well. It appears that that was written before the glibc function existed and is outdated. - Mark
.fi .P .IR Note : -- 2.53.0