Sam Steingold wrote:
> CLISP comes with a replacement realpath implementation for platforms
> which lacks it (are there still such platforms?).
If someone provides a correct implementation of realpath for gnulib, we will
accept it. But it's better to use canonicalize_file_name(), because
- realpath does not have size limitation and associated troubles. Citing the
Linux manpage:
BUGS
Avoid using this function. It is broken by design since it
is impossible to determine a suitable size for the output
buffer, resolved_path. According to POSIX a buffer of
size PATH_MAX suffices, but PATH_MAX need not be a defined
constant, and may have to be obtained using pathconf().
And asking pathconf() does not really help, since on the
one hand POSIX warns that the result of pathconf() may be
huge and unsuitable for mallocing memory. And on the other
hand pathconf() may return -1 to signify that PATH_MAX is
not bounded.
- many implementations of realpath have or had buffer overflow problems
(FreeBSD 4 [1], OpenBSD [2], NetBSD [3], Solaris [4], Linux libc4 and
libc5).
Bruno
[1] http://secunia.com/advisories/9423
[2] http://secunia.com/advisories/9447
[3] http://secunia.com/advisories/9446
[4] http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/8315/solution
