Re: [HACKERS] New pg_ctl has retrogressed in error messages - Mailing list pgsql-patches

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> I also changed all the pid variables to use pid_t.

Good, but ...

> !     fscanf(pidf, "%u", &pid);

this code will fail rather horribly if sizeof(pid_t) != sizeof(int).
Even more to the point, I believe a standalone backend will put
the negative of its PID into the file, and the revised code will fail
to parse that at all.

I think the safest code would be like

    long    tmp;

    fscanf(pidf, "%ld", &tmp);
    if (tmp < 0)
    {
        tmp = -tmp;
        // do anything else needed for backend case
    }
    pid = (pid_t) tmp;


            regards, tom lane