A method with return type size_t returns negative value

[Alan Bateman]

Steve Poole wrote:
> On 26/04/11 09:43, Alan Bateman wrote:
>
>> . Another point is that jdk8 will be our opportunity to remove the 
>> dependencies on the JVM_* functions
>>
>
> That sounds interesting Alan - care to share more?
>
As you know, it's really hard to remove things from the JDK. Medals are 
few. One thing that we've been trying to get rid of for many years is 
legacy interruptible I/O support, a troublesome mis-feature that dates 
back to jdk1.0. This is why older areas of the libraries (java.io and 
java.net specifically) call into the VM via JVM_* functions to do I/O. 
Back in jdk6 we added a VM option to allow the mechanism be disabled. 
Early in jdk7 the default option was changed so that it is now disabled 
by default. Once jdk8 opens then we should be able to remove the 
mechanism and clean-up the library code so that it no longer calls into 
the VM. My point to Jing LV was that this would seem a more appropriate 
time to do the clean-up he is suggesting.

-Alan.