Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!oliveb!sun!snafu!lm
From: lm@snafu.Sun.COM (Larry McVoy)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Nullpath in system calls considered harmful?
Message-ID: <88458@sun.uucp>
Date: 6 Feb 89 07:32:38 GMT
References: <88368@sun.uucp> <613@uva.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: lm@sun.UUCP (Larry McVoy)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 17

In article <613@uva.UUCP{ dik@uva.UUCP (Casper H.S. Dik) writes:
{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
		^^
{I'm not an oldtimer, but I think that disallowing the null path
{would break many programs.
{
{The main reason why kernels translate "" into "." is beacause of paths
{containing //. Try:
{% cp -i vmunix /

A number of people misinterpreted my question.  When I say ``null path'' I do
not mean ``null path component''.  I mean a path where strlen(path) == 0,
*path == 0, etc, etc.  

Larry McVoy, Lachman Associates.			  My opinions are that.