Re: moot and unposixy error message

[Paul Eggert]

Benno Schulenberg <address@hidden> writes:

> Since max_bytes_to_format cannot be negative, the second 'if' will 
> never trigger, so the whole six lines are moot.

It can trigger if there is an arithmetic overflow.

> Further, the Open Group says that 'od' should not produce an error 
> when '-j' plus '-N' is longer than the file, so the above section 
> can be removed.

But the problem is that we don't know whether -j plus -N is longer than
the file in this case.  The overflow prevents us from determining that.
It is possible, on some platforms, for files to contain more bytes than
the widest C integer can represent.