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Date:      Fri, 15 May 2020 08:56:01 +1000
From:      andrew clarke <mail@ozzmosis.com>
To:        "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs@berklix.com>
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: [HEADSUP] Disallowing read() of a directory fd
Message-ID:  <20200514225601.o427xiucy67reh4x@ozzmosis.com>
In-Reply-To: <202005142017.04EKH0aA093503@fire.js.berklix.net>
References:  <CACNAnaFszg%2BQWPRS0kghsnQMxXc%2B5niPTTNiUPSmK60YyBGCzA@mail.gmail.com> <202005142017.04EKH0aA093503@fire.js.berklix.net>

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On 2020-05-14 22:17:00, Julian H. Stacey (jhs@berklix.com) wrote:

> There is ZERO need for a spurious change at 2 days notice after 42+ years !
> 
> "cat ." as been supported since Unix V6 1978 or earlier, 
> no problem, even occasionaly useful.

I think you're overstating its importance.

In the past I've accidentally run "cat" on a directory in FreeBSD and was
surprised it didn't return an error.

Running "cat /" here on FreeBSD 12.1-REL results in no useful output, perhaps
because root is on ZFS:

$ cat / | hd
00000000  03 00 00 00 00 00 00 80  19 a5 bc 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00              |............|
0000001c

So I have no problem with "cat /" returning a more useful error message instead.



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