If I understand you correctly, libraries should return the errno (because errors may mean strings also), and not try writing anything to stderr. The application should do the job of writing to stderr.
Is that just your opinion OR is it accepted programming practice OR is it documented somewhere ?..
Accepted convention for good libraries, and one that we have decided to follow. What *is* permissible is to return the error string from the function without printing it - this lets the application decide what to do with the string. But, printing directly to stderr from a library isn't good practice nor one we will encourage.
The reason I ask this is because I know of atleast one library (pthread) that writes stuff to stderr (ofcourse, only under some circumstances)
Who said pthread was a good library? =-) -- justin
