FTSENT: name and path on `/' versus name and path on `*/'

[John Baldwin]

On Thursday, March 15, 2012 4:46:03 pm Matthew Story wrote:
> Found a curious incongruent behavior in fts(3), wondering if there is some
> reason for this, or if it's just a bug. If you include the path
> 
> `/'
> 
> the FTSENT at depth 0 that is returned for the path has both fts_path = "/"
> and fts_name = "/", compared to other entries, like /var which has fts_path
> = "/" and fts_path = "/" and fts_name = "var", or /var/, which has fts_path
> = "/var/" and fts_name = "".
> 
> Given the behavior of other paths used in fts(3), my expectation here is
> that FTSENT for path "/" on depth 0 would have fts_path = "/" and fts_name
> = "".  Haven't delved down into the code enough to figure out where this is
> happening, but from a cursory read through libc/gen/fts.c there doesn't
> seem to be any explicit special casing of the path "/".
> 
> Can anyone shed light on why this behavior is desirable, or if it's just a
> bug I'm happy to file a PR and delve further into fts.c ...

My guess is that it is a bug.  / is a bit special as it serves two purposes
(i.e., both the idea of "/var" and "/var/" map to "/" for the root).

-- 
John Baldwin