Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Nullpath in system calls considered harmful?
Message-ID: <9589@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 4 Feb 89 08:01:07 GMT
References: <88368@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 13

In article <88368@sun.uucp> lm@sun.UUCP (Larry McVoy) writes:
>	A question for oldtimers: is there any good reason that null paths
>    (ie, open("", flags)) should NOT be considered an error.  If you don't
>    already know that many kernels translate "" into "." you probably
>    can't answer this question.  POSIX wants "" to be an error.

We've discussed this before (Dennis even chipped in).
From one point of view "" is a natural way to designate the CWD.
However, it can lead to unpleasant surprises in usages such as:
	strcat( strcat( strcat( strcpy( cmd, "rm " ), dir ), "/" ), file );
	system( cmd );
Also, "" is often the result of program bugs and having it be an
illegal pathname is safer than letting the operation occur.