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Date:      Mon, 8 Jul 2002 12:20:13 -0700
From:      "Crist J. Clark" <crist.clark@attbi.com>
To:        Peter Pentchev <roam@ringlet.net>
Cc:        freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: bin/39940: /usr/sbin/periodic sends thousands of emails
Message-ID:  <20020708122013.A34407@blossom.cjclark.org>
In-Reply-To: <200206281050.g5SAo40M000627@freefall.freebsd.org>; from roam@ringlet.net on Fri, Jun 28, 2002 at 03:50:04AM -0700
References:  <200206281050.g5SAo40M000627@freefall.freebsd.org>

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On Fri, Jun 28, 2002 at 03:50:04AM -0700, Peter Pentchev wrote:
> The following reply was made to PR bin/39940; it has been noted by GNATS.
> 
> From: Peter Pentchev <roam@ringlet.net>
> To: Guolin Cheng <guolin@alexa.com>
> Cc: bug-followup@FreeBSD.org
> Subject: Re: bin/39940: /usr/sbin/periodic sends thousands of emails
> Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 13:39:54 +0300
> 
>  On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 05:28:21PM -0700, Guolin Cheng wrote:

[snip]

>  > 3, the coufiguration file */periodic.conf, which contain variable
>  > definition entries including <basedir>_{show|output|...}, will confuse
>  > Bourne Shell interpreter when the basedir contains character '.',
>  > which is normal for directory name but not appropriate for shell
>  > variable name substitution.
>  
>  One might argue that this may be solved by the "Don't do that"
>  approach..  An underscore character would serve just as well as a word
>  separator in the directory name.

And this is also documented in periodic(8),

BUGS
     Since one specifies information about a directory using shell variables
     containing the string, <basedir>, <basedir> must only contain characters
     that are valid within a sh(1) variable name, alphanumerics and under-
     scores, and the first character may not be numeric.

-- 
Crist J. Clark                     |     cjclark@alum.mit.edu
                                   |     cjclark@jhu.edu
http://people.freebsd.org/~cjc/    |     cjc@freebsd.org

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