> > "Todd C. Miller" <todd.mil...@courtesan.com> writes: > > > >> From source inspection, Net and Free appear to allow read(2) of > >> dirs to succeed. However, since Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris have > >> the EISDIR behavior I think it is probably safe from a portability > >> standpoint. > >> > >> We're long past the days when opendir(3)/readdir(3) used read(2)... > >> > >> HP-UX and AIX still allow reads of directories but no one cares > >> about them ;-) > > > > So I think that we agree that EISDIR is more useful, and seems safe from > > a portability POV. I've built base and x sets on i386, and ajacoutot > > ran the ports bulk builds. The two offenders in the ports tree were due > > to an unrelated glitch in base libtool which has since been fixed. > > I've hold this for a few days until the release cycle comes back to an > almost normal state. But, as Theo points out, we have to think about the > drawbacks. Some configurations that do work right now are very likely > to break. > > $ cat /; echo $? > cat: /: Is a directory > 1 > > is only a trivial example. > > I still think that it is better to error out instead of, for example, > silently ignoring invalid/mistyped CLI arguments and config parameters. > But I don't want to mindlessly break people's setups behind their backs, > so I'd like to hear more opinions and... *test reports*.
The change will affect a huge number of program in significant ways. I am waiting for people to actually try itd, and I haven't been seeing that. I don't like the cat example above. It does not actually expose the full change in behaviour from this simple program. Here is a better example: % cat / /etc/shells; echo $? # $OpenBSD: shells,v 1.8 2009/02/14 17:06:40 sobrado Exp $ # # list of acceptable shells for chpass(1). # ftpd(8) will not allow users to connect who are not using # one of these shells, unless the user is listed in /etc/ftpchroot. /bin/sh /bin/csh /bin/ksh 0 % Will become: % cat / /etc/shells; echo $? cat: /: Is a directory 1 % The semantic will cause a subtle behavioural difference in hundreds of programs.
