Subject: Re: bin/3166: ls -lW /dir/whiteout fails, but ls -lW /dir shows the whiteout
To: Marc Horowitz <marc@cygnus.com>
From: Todd Vierling <tv@pobox.com>
List: netbsd-bugs
Date: 01/31/1997 19:08:12
On Thu, 30 Jan 1997, Marc Horowitz wrote:

: ls doesn't deal properly with listing whiteouts when a filename which
: is a whiteout is specified.
: 
: It is true that the man page documents the behavior as is, but I
: believe the behavior is incorrect.

The problem with this is that whiteouts *don't* exist when accessed
directly; you only see them when listing its parent directory with
getdirentries().  If you try to stat() a whiteout, the file doesn't
exist--that's the purpose of whiteouts (to keep the files from existing in
the upper layer!). 

You could supposedly churn through the getdirentries() list when -W is
specified and the file returns not found, but that's one hell of a bit of
work for one file.

=====
== Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Business tv@iag.net) Mmmm, donuts ==
== System administrator/technician, Internet Access Group, Orlando Florida ==
== Dialups in Orange, Volusia, Lake, Osceola counties - http://www.iag.net ==