On Fri, Dec 17, 2004 at 07:36:15PM -0500, Christopher Faylor wrote:
If /cygdrive/c/cygwin/bin./ls.exe works, then /bin./ls.exe should also work. Or, both should fail. "consistent"
Thinking some more about this, there are really some inconsistencies with the current and proposed behavior that I don't like.
Here's a table. Please let me know if I got anything wrong:
What Now Pierre's proposal Windows Equiv ls /bin... Works Won't work dir c:\cygwin\bin... doesn't work ls /bin. Works Won't work(?) dir c:\cygwin\bin. works ls /lib/gcc. Works Works(?) dir c:\cygwin\lib\gcc. works ls /lib./gcc. Works Won't work(?) dir c:\cygwin\lib.\gcc. works ls /cygdrive/c/cygwin/bin. Works Works(?) dir c:\cygwin\bin. works ls /bin../ls.exe Won't work Won't work dir c:\cygwin\bin..\ls.exe won't work ls /cygdrive/c/cygwin/bin../ls.exe Won't work Won't work ditto ls /bin/ls.exe... Works Works(?) dir c:\cygwin\bin\ls.exe... works ln -s foo bar. "Works"* Works** .lnk files with dot extensions allowed
If I understand this correctly, I think "Pierre's proposal" == "cygwin's behavior before 2004/4", on all counts.
So, in thinking about all of this, I have a radical proposal which I have previously alluded to.
path_conv::check could detect the existence of trailing dots or spaces in path components of the output win32 path and set ENOENT in such cases unless the file was associated with either a managed mount or Corinna's proposed "posix" mount.
The rationale for this is that you really can't (except in the symlink case) create a file with a trailing dot so why should we lie and say that you can?
This probably is too radical an idea and would result in breakage. So, my alternate thought is that single dots should be silently ignored in all path components. Multiple dots should be ignored in the trailing path component, regardless of whether the file refers to a directory or not, which makes cygwin slightly incompatible with windows.
I'm not sure how spaces fall out in the above table. I'm not sure that the same rules should be applied for spaces and dots above.
I have no strong opinion in these issues (yet), but please look also at the related ending-colon ':extension' problem on NTFS.
Such files are also not listed, but probably should be.
"listing ADS streams" http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2004-11/msg00292.html -- Reini Urban http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/home/rurban/
