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
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