Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!shelby!Portia!forel!karish
From: karish@forel.stanford.edu (Chuck Karish)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Re: access()
Summary: Special interpretation of '//'?
Message-ID: <813@Portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 10 Mar 89 23:25:05 GMT
References: <3281@ficc.uu.net> <5980045@hpfcdc.HP.COM>
Sender: USENET News System <news@Portia.stanford.edu>
Reply-To: karish@forel.stanford.edu (Chuck Karish)
Organization: Mindcraft, Inc.
Lines: 25

In article <5980045@hpfcdc.HP.COM> rml@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Bob Lenk) wrote:
>> IEEE 1003.1 requires that consecutive slashes be allowed and in effect
>> be interpreted as a single slash.  (Thus OpenNet's convention would not
>> be POSIX-compliant.)

>1003.1 makes an explicit exception for // at the start of a pathname,
>precisely because of networked file systems like this.  Three or more
>slashes at the beginning of a pathname or two or more anywhere else
>are equivalent to a single slash.  This was the topic of considerable
>debate, and varied among drafts.

	Where does this show up in the standard?  I've looked in the
	entry for 'pathname resolution' (IEEE Std 1003.1-1988, Chapter
	2.4, p. 36) and can find no such exception described.

	The only relevant requirement I found says "If the pathname
	begins with a slash, the predecessor of the first filename in
	the pathname is taken to be the root directory of the process[.]"

	Since a filename may not contain a slash, this means that
	two leading slashes are equivalent to a single slash.

	Chuck Karish	karish@denali.stanford.edu
			hplabs!hpda!mindcrf!karish
			(415) 493-7277