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From: guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: /bin/test and stat(2)
Message-ID: <30667@sun.uucp>
Date: Mon, 12-Oct-87 14:37:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.30667
Posted: Mon Oct 12 14:37:22 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Oct-87 06:32:03 EDT
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> I think it has been in since the beginning.  I believe it was considered
> a feature but wouldn't be surprised if part of the reason was that it was
> faster,

Probably not; the time spent testing one byte of the string is minimal compared
to the time spent doing the rest of "namei".

> If JJ Programer only wants to code on SysVid Compliant machines then
> they can assume stat("",&b) and test -d ""  will return ENOENT and false
> resepctively.

Guess again; the SVID says nothing more than "a null string is undefined and
*may* be considered an error" (emphasis mine).  There will certainly be
SVID-compliant systems that treat a null string as a synonym for ".".
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com