Re: [HACKERS] New pg_ctl has retrogressed in error messages

Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)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