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From: bostic@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.bugs.4bsd
Subject: Re: another unix joke
Keywords: rmdir joke
Message-ID: <26090@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 14 Sep 88 22:20:08 GMT
References: <8488@smoke.ARPA>
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 18

In article <8488@smoke.ARPA>, gwyn@smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
> More UNIX jokes, from 4.3BSD:
> 
> $ mkdir foo/
> mkdir: foo/: No such file or directory
> $ mkdir foo
> $ rmdir foo/
> rmdir: foo/: Is a directory

Though I'm not sure what you're trying say, the behavior you're
objecting to is correct.  As the NULL pathname is, by convention,
the equivalent of ".", "foo/" is the same as "foo/.". Creating
or removing "foo/." is illegal.  While it is arguable that the
returned error should be different, or perhaps explicitly documented,
4BSD is doing the right thing.  As POSIX 1003.1 does not support
the equivalence of the NULL path and ".", the problem will die a
natural death.

Keith Bostic