Re: rmdir system call

Marty Leisner (leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com)
Wed, 20 Mar 1996 09:15:59 PST

> Traditionally its invalid, but I think POSIX allows it to support
> more stupid programs; therefore "//bin", "/usr//bin", and "/etc/"
> should all be valid directory names; maybe even combinations of
> these.
> While this makes it easier for application programs, it makes it more
> difficult (inefficient) for the kernel (I think).
> ------------
> U

doing a path look up, the kernel should collapse multiple consecutive
slashes into one slash (this is very easy).

I just read a 1988 draft of the posix spec and the gnu libc manual...
I didn't see anything about what happens with a trailing slash (everything
thing I read said it was "a file name"...filenames can't have trailing
slashes, but directory names can...)

-- 
marty
leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com  
Member of the League for Programming Freedom