Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!ucbvax!ucdavis!lll-crg!gymble!umcp-cs!seismo!brl-tgr!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>)
Newsgroups: net.bugs.usg
Subject: Re: SVR2 rm -r bug
Message-ID: <1037@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 25-Dec-85 15:36:06 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.1037
Posted: Wed Dec 25 15:36:06 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Dec-85 00:42:39 EST
References: <861@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Distribution: net
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
Lines: 26

Reports from actual UNIX System V Release 2 sites
indicate that the original SVR2 "rm" does not have
the particular bug that I reported a few days ago.
Sites that have not modified their version of "rm"
in an attempt to fix some of its other problems
should not worry about this one.  Sites that have
picked up the "rm -r" fix reported to the net long
ago should check for the bug.

Known possible rm problems:
1)  "rm -r" fails when total number of chars in path
reaches 100.
2)  "rm -r" fails when directories are deeply nested
(20 levels).
3)  "rm -r" reads directories directly rather than
using directory access library routines.
4)  "rm .. other_args" fails to remove other_args.
5)  "rm -r", when patched to fix problem # 1, may
fail to work in cases like "rm -r foo/bar x".

Recent BRL System V emulation distributions fixed
problems # 1,2,3 but introduced problem # 5.  This
has now been fixed, along with # 4.

I'm beginning to think that the best way to fix
problems in system software is to totally rewrite it.