On Wed, 6 Oct 1999, Tom Lane wrote:
> Vince Vielhaber <vev@michvhf.com> writes:
> > I just sent patches for libpq++ to return an int (I'll also submit changes
> > to the sgml docs) and return a -1 if PQcmdTuples() returns a NULL pointer.
> > I just haven't been able to convince it to return a NULL.
>
> It won't. If you look at the source, it's quite clear that it never
> returns NULL. It will return an empty string ("") if it notices a
> problem.
>
> Also, if you wanted to be really paranoid you'd check that what it
> returns actually looks like it is a number, because PQcmdTuples doesn't
> check that there is a number in the right spot in the command status
> returned by the backend.
>
> These two points together are why I suggested testing for an initial
> digit...
Ok, I'm looking for an empty string now and that will return a -1. The
other return possibilities *should* be handled correctly by atoi() since
it doesn't care if there's any leading blanks/spaces, as long as it's
not a non-numeric non-space character. If it's going to get that crazy
with differing possibilities then we'd be further ahead to fix it in
either the backend or in libpq (by adding a new function and letting
this one fade away). Is there an atoi() out there that would not return
a 123 if passed the string " 123 " ?? It does the right thing in
hpux8 and in FreeBSD 3.2.
Vince.
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