In message <712.1066165091@munnari.OZ.AU>, Robert Elz writes:
>    Date:        Mon, 13 Oct 2003 21:52:40 +0000 (UTC)
>    From:        Hubert Feyrer <hubertf@NetBSD.org>
>    Message-ID:  <20031013215240.5232E2DA1D@cvs.netbsd.org>
>
>  | Prevent funny output when giving a directory name on the command line.
>
>Is that *really* necessary?
>
>Lots of programs don't check to see if they've been given a directory (or
>special file, or ...) when they expect an input file.   Are you planning to
>fix all of them to check and see if they happen to have been given the
>wrong file type?
>
>There has to be some user responsibility left - if the user does something
>particularly stupid (as in "dc .." or "dc .") they ought to simply suffer
>the stupid output, or other bizarre behaviour - as long as it does no harm
>to the system, and thus one doesn't.

First off, it's much more likely to be a typo than a stupid mistake.
Secondly, dc has the ability to run external binaries, making it a good
program to have a few safeguards against accidentally running binary
data.

-s