Re: EOF is a misnomer?

[Konstantin Kharlamov <hi-angel@yandex.ru>]

On Tue, 2021-05-11 at 08:27 -0500, Peng Yu via Libc-help wrote:
> man getchar says
> 
> "       fgetc(), getc(), and getchar() return the character read as an unsigned
>        char cast to an int or EOF on end of file or error."
> 
> EOF literally stands for end of file. But the above functions can
> return EOF when there is an error.
> 
> In feof(), "eof" just means end of file as shown in man feof.
> 
>        The function feof() tests the  end-of-file  indicator  for  the  stream
>        pointed  to by stream, returning nonzero if it is set.  The end-of-file
>        indicator can be cleared only by the function clearer().
> 
> So the macro name EOF is a misnomer. It could have been named as
> something like EOF_OR_ERR? The fact that its name is EOF is due to
> some historical reasons? Thanks.
> 

You are probably right, but I don't think it is correct to ask that question to libc developers, whether it is Glibc or any other libc. The functions in question are part of C standard: https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/io/fgetc So any change in that regard would have to go through the procedure of sending a C language proposal to C committee.

That said, making any change to C language is very hard, see this article https://thephd.github.io/your-c-compiler-and-standard-library-will-not-help-you from a member of C committee. These days though I doubt there's much point in making changes to C, because we have Rust instead, which slowly makes its way even to the Linux kernel.