Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 22:01:47 -0700 (PDT) From: Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com> To: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au> Cc: "Steve O'Hara-Smith" <steveo@eircom.net>, David Wolfskill <david@catwhisker.org>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: symlink(2) [Was: Re: tcsh.cat] Message-ID: <200106160501.f5G51lf58001@earth.backplane.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0106161355360.89789-100000@besplex.bde.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
:...
:> It has been on evey platform I have ever used ln -s on.
:>
:> DW> One may well argue that this is "broken" in some way(s). Still, changing
:> DW> it at this point could well be considered a POLA violation, at best.
:>
:> I would argue loud and long that changing that *would* be broken. There
:> is never a guarantee (or even an implication) that a symlink points to a
:> valid directory entry (think unmounted filesystems, NFS ...). I find it hard
:> to imagine why creation time should be special in that regard.
:
:We are (or at least I am) talking about changing it to prevent links to a
:string that can _never_ be a valid pathname. Fortunately, in POSIX there
:is only one such string (the empty string).
Symlinks do not have to contain paths. People use them for all sorts
of things so it would be totally inappropriate to put any sort of
restriction on the data you can store as a symlink. For example,
symlink() is the *ONLY* system call that is atomic across all
flavors of NFS. There is absolutely nothing wrong with creating
a symlink that is "".
-Matt
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200106160501.f5G51lf58001>