[wahern]

Yet another example where the BSD code is simpler and clearer.

I don't think it's particularly controversial to say that when you want to explore how the internals of unix work, you're almost always better off reading the BSD source code first. Even if you don't run a BSD. (musl libc is great, too, but limited to libc.)

I do most of my systems programming for Linux platforms, but when I have a question about semantics my first stop is POSIX to learn how it should behave. My second stop is the BSD source so I can quickly grok the mechanics. Lastly would be the Linux or GNU code, to confirm exact behavior. Setting aside the fact that Linux or GNU code usually feels like it was written inside-out and upside-down, you can't well understand why and how something works without having a more general understanding of the problem and solution space. This applies to everything in life, but in the context of systems software programming I've developed a very concrete process.

Having a copy of POSIX locally (greppable, but also the local HTML frames version is super easy to navigate), as well as easy access to BSD code in /usr/src, can make this a very fast and efficient process. Much faster than Googling, wading through Stack Overflow, and other haphazard habits.