Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2003 20:00:15 -0800 (PST) From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@freebsd.org> To: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: docs/46415: Proposed change in man-page wording for "chown" Message-ID: <200301250400.h0P40Fgm017754@freefall.freebsd.org>
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The following reply was made to PR docs/46415; it has been noted by GNATS. From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@freebsd.org> To: bug-followup@freebsd.org Cc: "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@attbi.com>, System Administrator <root@asarian-host.net> Subject: Re: docs/46415: Proposed change in man-page wording for "chown" Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 05:51:36 +0200 On 2003-01-24 19:19, "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@attbi.com> wrote: > Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@freebsd.org> writes: > > Change the user ID and/or the group ID for the file hierarchies rooted > > in the files instead of just the files themselves. > > I guess it'll do. It sure is geeky. "Hierarchies rooted in files"? > I'm not sure that it's even explained in intro Unix books that "files" > can mean "directories" or what "rooted" means. But I guess newbies can > learn to decypher geek-speak the same way we did -- the hard way. I just checked the other two BSDs. They haven't changed anything here. My guess is that they share the opinion that "everything is a file under Unix". A more verbose description can't hurt though. > It probably needs to mention the culprit, ".." as it's not obvious why > a dot needs care. "*dog.cat" needs no care, but "dog/../../cat" does. > (The latter's need for care can probably go without saying with or > without a "*".) How about: > > Beware of unintentionally operating on the ".." hard link when using > wildcards which start with a dot (e.g., ".*") . This is nice, short and precise. Paraphrasing your initial change here a bit, does this look better? - -R Change the user ID and/or the group ID of the directory entries - specified by the "file" arguments and, recursively, the contents - of any directory subtrees named by those directory entries. + -R Change the user ID and/or the group ID of the directory + entries specified by the "file" arguments and, recursively, + the contents of any directory subtrees in the argument list. + When the -R option is used, beware of unintentionally + operating on the ".." hard link when using wildcards which + start with a dot (e.g., ".*"). > Also: In your sentence, I think you ought to paren the dot character and > move it after "character", or just remove the word "dot". True. I'll dust my groff_mdoc stuff and use parens. > P.S. Here's a little log of a test I just ran. I guess I don't > know what we're trying to document, now. It didn't pick up the ".." > link. ???? > > $ chown -R root:wheel .* > chown: .*: No such file or directory Hmmm, what is your shell? I've tried both /bin/sh and bash with the following and .. shows up in the list printed: $ echo chown -R root:wheel .* chown -R root:wheel . .. .X0-lock .X11-unix $ - Giorgos To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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