Dmytro Taranovsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > As far as I know, mkdir prints "No such file or directory" only when the > parent directory does not exist
Only if by "not exist" you mean "mkdir() fails with errno==ENOENT", which is a bit circular. For example: $ rm -f x y $ ln -s x y $ ls -l x y ls: x: No such file or directory lrwxrwxrwx 1 eggert eggert 1 2004-09-07 19:33 y -> x $ mkdir y/d mkdir: cannot create directory `y/d': No such file or directory Here, a more accurate error message would be something like "y exists, but it's a dangling symbolic link, so the name y/d doesn't work". That'd take a bit of work to generate. Or how about this one: $ rm -f x $ mkdir x/y/z mkdir: cannot create directory `x/y/z': No such file or directory Here the real problem is that x doesn't exist, not that x/y doesn't exist; and mkdir would have to root around and discover this in order to avoid the misleading error message "x/y doesn't exist". Here's another one: $ mkdir '' mkdir: cannot create directory `': No such file or directory A different case entirely. There are probably other cases but I hope you get the idea. Fixing all this to produce a "nice" message, that is reliable in general, would be a bit of work. The fundamental problem here is that errno==ENOENT is overloaded, but this is more the fault of mkdir() than of the "mkdir" command. _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
