File::Stat#blksize etc. should return nil instead of 0

On Sun, 2002-08-04 at 01:45, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
> I'd like to hear from others,
> especially those who working on the platforms without these members in
> struct stat.

Ok, nobody seems to use those platforms (MS Windows, I guess) anyway. ;)

But I can try to explain more clearly where I see a problem. If somebody
writes some code like this

File.open(File.join("anyfile") do |f|
	until f.eof?
		s = f.read(f.stat.blksize)
		# do something
	end
end

it will work ok, if the platform supports blksize. If it doesn't this
will be an infinite loop because many reads of 0 bytes won't reach EOF.
With nil it would be ok by accident.

If f.read(8 * f.stat.blksize) is used, a type error will occur. But such
an error is probably better than a semantic error which causes the
program to get stuck in a loop.

-- 
Give me a man or a woman who has read a thousand books and you give me
an 
interesting companion. Give me a man or a woman who has read perhaps
three and 
you give me a dangerous enemy indeed.
  -- Anne Rice, "The witching hour"