: I have some code which is calling rmdir and passing the directory name
: is with a trailing '/'.
: eg rmdir("/tmp/nick/")
: The system call is returning with 'ENOENT'.
: The same code works ok on other operating systems. (HPUX, IRIX, AIX ...)
: Like my last posting, which is right?
: If Linux is wrong, what can I do about it?
Linux is wrong.
The last question is easy: remove this trailing slash.
Which is right is more tricky, since POSIX.1 contradicts
itself. The classical interpretation is that an empty
pathname refers to the current directory, so that
"/dir/" is equivalent to "/dir/.".
But POSIX explicitly forbids this use of empty names.
Nevertheless, the definition of `pathname' says:
If the pathname refers to a directory, it may also
have one or more trailing slashes.
Probably Linux should accept such filenames, and probably
you should not use them.
This is the POSIX.1 definition of pathname (2.2.2.57):
A pathname consists of, at most, {PATH_MAX} bytes, including the
terminating null character. It has an optional beginning slash,
followed by zero or more filenames separated by slashes. If the
pathname refers to a directory, it may also have one or more trailing
slashes. Multiple successive slashes are considered to be the same as
one slash. A pathname that begins with two successive slashes may be
interpreted in an implementation-defined manner, although more than two
leading slashes shall be treated as a single slash. The interpretation
of the pathname is described in 2.3.6
Section 2.3.6 is rather long, so I won't quote it here. It is in this
section that statement "A null pathname is invalid". However, it's
clear that this is referring to the entire pathname, and not a pathname
component. In any case, in the POSIX.1 definition, multiple separator
characters '/' do not create null pathname components which are the same
as '.' (although many traditional Unix systems implement things this
way). Instead, POSIX.1 states that "multiple slashes are to be
considered the same as one slash."
So I don't think POSIX.1 is self-contradictory. It is true that Linux
isn't strictly POSIX.1 compliant right now, because of we don't support
the trailing slash requirements. However, if the Linux-FT distribution
has achieved official POSIX.1 certification, then presumably they've
fixed this in their 1.2 kernel. Perhaps someone from the Linux-FT team
can get this (and any other changes which they had to make) integrated
into the 1.3 development kernels?
- Ted