Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 23:33:07 +1000 (EST) From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au> To: Richard Tobin <richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> Cc: "Andrey A. Chernov" <ache@nagual.pp.ru>, Adrian Browne <Adrian@nu-earth.demon.co.uk>, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: tcsh.cat Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0106152325320.84795-100000@besplex.bde.org> In-Reply-To: <200106151308.OAA07742@rhymer.cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
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On Fri, 15 Jun 2001, Richard Tobin wrote: > > P> The string pointed to by path1 shall be treated only as a character > > P> string and shall not be validated as a pathname. > > I have heard on several occasions of peope using symlink(2) to > atomically store some small piece of information for locking purposes. > (Symlink was more reliably atomic over NFS than other methods.) So it > is possible that changing this might break something. Yes. /etc/malloc.conf is another example (for non-locking purposes). Here's an example of a complication: what is the semantics of /tmp/foo/bar where foo is a symlink to ""? I think the pathname resolves to /tmp//bar and then to /tmp/bar, but this is surprising since foo doesn't point anywhere. Similarly, /tmp/bar/foo resolves to /tmp/bar/ and then to /tmp/bar (/tmp/bar must be a directory to get that far). Bruce To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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