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Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!dave
From: dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman)
Newsgroups: net.bugs,net.unix-wizards
Subject: UNIX error message set wrong on open "file1/file2"
Message-ID: <4778@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Jul-84 14:02:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.4778
Posted: Thu Jul  5 14:02:28 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Jul-84 14:28:19 EDT
Organization: The Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 24
Keywords: perror, ENOENT, EACCES, open

Running 4.1, I tried to do
	tail foo/bar
and got
	foo/bar: Permission denied
which surprised me, since I was in my own directory. Turns out
that "foo" exists, but is a file, not a directory. The error
value really should be ENOENT ("No such file or directory") rather
than EACCES ("Permission denied").

This doesn't show up running tail(1) on v7, since v7 tail doesn't
call perror, but a test of perror revealed the same treatment.

Any reason why open("file/file") should return EACCES? The v7
manual page for intro(2) says EACCES means "An attempt was made
to access a file in a way forbidden *by the protection system*"
(emphasis mine).


Dave Sherman
Toronto
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