Re: kern/45425: how to restore traditional unix behaviour for slashes on the end of pathnames

[David Holland <dholland-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Sat, Nov 05, 2011 at 09:35:02PM +0000, Greg A. Woods wrote:
 >>  That doesn't work for e.g. mkdir.
 >  
 >  Of course not!  :-)
 >  
 >  mkdir(2) creates a new directory, one that does not yet exist.
 >  
 >  Appending the "/." would only specify an existing directory.
 >  
 >  Trying to re-create an existing directory again is an error.  :-)

Sure, but "mkdir foo/" is currently accepted.

 >  >  That would drive me crazy, FWIW. And probably not just me. So it's not
 >  >  exactly neutral.
 >  
 >  :-)
 >  
 >  I guess you didn't start out by using a traditional Unix.  :-)

Perhaps not. I'm not old enough to have used anything more antique
than Ultrix and SunOS4 for serious purposes. I guess I've also tangled
with HP-UX 9.x, which (being SVR3) was conceptually far more dated
than even Ultrix, regardless of its official timestamp.

 >  I think the big problem here has come when people confuse the way the
 >  kernel interprets pathnames with the way some applications interpret
 >  pathnames some of the time, just as you do below.

I what?

 >  >  Also, to avoid massive confusion you'd have to change globbing so that
 >  >  "*/" behaves consistently,
 >  
 >  I must confess I have never, to the best of my memory, seen such a thing
 >  attempted.
 >  
 >  That's a shell issue anyway, not a kernel/namei issue.  The kernel does
 >  no globbing.

Of course. But so what? The system's overall behavior should be
consistent.

 >  >  and that in turn will break a bunch of
 >  >  scripts that do things like "ls -d */ | ...".
 >  
 >  I've definitely never seen anything like that.  I would think it was an
 >  error if I did see it.

Perhaps your experience isn't universal...

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost