On 3/29/26 12:47, James Youngman wrote:
On Sat, Mar 28, 2026 at 11:46 PM raf <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sat, Mar 28, 2026 at 03:22:05PM +0000, James Youngman <[email protected]>
wrote:
What about "directory with no children" or "directory with no
descendants"?
There's nothing ambiguous about "empty directory". Everyone knows
that all directories contain "." and "..".
FWIW, POSIX doesn't require that and not all file systems have them.
POSIX distinguishes the meaning of dot and dot-dot in pathname resolution
<https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/basedefs/V1_chap04.html#tag_04_16>
(where they act as I'm sure you expect) and in the output of readdir
<https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/functions/readdir.html#tag_17_477>
(from which they may be absent without affecting pathname resolution).
Thanks for the pointers.
IOW to be strictly correct we would need to say:
Zero-length file or a directory containing no entries (other than "." and "..").
I agree that this would be the more precise yet most concise wording.
(I unilaterally suggested "zero-length" file because IMO "zero-byte" file
invites nitpicking about confusion with a non-empty file containing bytes
whose values are all zero.)
yes, that's better, indeed.
Based on our discussion so far it seems some or perhaps all suggested
clarifications (including my own) have provoked corrections and quibbles.
Whereas the existing wording has survived a long time and generated no
confusion or bug reports to date, so far as I can recall. Perhaps that
indicates we should keep the current wording.
I agree here as well. So let's leave it as it is.
Thanks & have a nice day,
Berny
