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From: guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: /bin/test and stat(2) [actually meaning of null pathname]
Message-ID: <31904@sun.uucp>
Date: Sat, 24-Oct-87 23:04:44 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.31904
Posted: Sat Oct 24 23:04:44 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Oct-87 01:31:26 EST
References: <9723@brl-adm.ARPA> <1063@moscom.UUCP> <30667@sun.uucp> <501@riddle.UUCP>
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Lines: 23
Keywords: POSIX, 1003.1, SVID, X/OPEN, FIPS, standards

> Apparently POSIX won't cut it as a Federal Information Processing Standard
> unless this and a number of other vaguenesses are cleared up.

The consensus of the meeting in question was that, in a large number of cases,
the behavior of POSIX systems *should* be left unspecified; there was no
benefit to nailing the behavior down (there are at most three programs in all
of SunOS, for instance, that use the "kill" system call with a process ID
argument of -1; applications other than system shutdown commands - which are
supplied by the vendor, not written by users - should not *care* whether this
causes the signal to be sent to the process doing the "kill").

In the particular case of a null pathname, the consensus of the meeting was
that a null pathname should be treated as an error, with error code ENOENT.
This may or may not end up being what the FIPS says.  POSIX will probably
continue to allow either behavior, which is not a problem; there is no reason
for an application to explicitly use a null string as a pathname, and those
applications that might do so implicitly can just let the chips fall where they
may (if they don't treat a null string specially already, e.g. a command that
prompts you for a pathname and, if you just type RETURN, uses a default
pathname, or uses the last one you typed at it, or complains, or exits, or...).
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com