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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!nuchat!sugar!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.databases
Subject: Re: getcwd() and friends.
Message-ID: <3684@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 5 Apr 89 04:53:34 GMT
References: <3675@ficc.uu.net> <14689@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US>
Organization: Xenix Support
Lines: 23

In article <3675@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>One thing that really would make things a lot easier would be a fchdir()
>call, that took a file descriptor and tried to chdir to it. All the info
>that UNIX needs for the chdir is available via the fd.

In article <14689@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US>, jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (John F. Haugh II) writes:
> However ... all of the information needed for a chdir() is not present
> in the file descriptor.  It is possible to be handed a file descriptor
> which you would not be able to have opened because some component of
> the search path denies access now, but at some point in the past did
> allow access.

That's an issue worth considering, but I'm not sure that it's really
a security problem. After all, you could always spawn a child in a
directory and send it messages over a pipe. Same thing, just a little more
complex.

It would be really nice to be able to pass an fd to another program, too.
-- 
Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation.

Business: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180.
Personal: ...!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.hackercorp.com.