rm(1) bug, possibly serious

[LI Xin]

Oliver Fromme wrote:
> Nicolas Rachinsky wrote:
>  > Oliver Fromme wrote:
>  > > By the way, an additional confusion is that ".." and "../"
>  > > are handled differently.  Specifying ".." always leads to
>  > > this message:
>  > > 
>  > > rm: "." and ".." may not be removed
>  > > 
>  > > and nothing is actually removed.  It is confusing that
>  > > adding a slash leads to a different error message _and_
>  > > removal of the contents of the parent directory.  Clearly
>  > > a POLA violation.
>  > 
>  > Adding a slash often leads to different behaviour.
> 
> Yes, I'm aware of that.  I often make use of the feature
> that "find /sys/" expands the symlink, while "find /sys"
> does not.  The same holds true for ls(1).
> 
> However, I would still argue that there is no sane reason
> for "rm -rf ../" behaving differently from "rm -rf ..",
> especially because it behaves differently in a destructive
> way.  That's why I call it a POLA violation.

Also a POSIX violation IMHO :-)

Cheers,
-- 
Xin LI <delphij at delphij.net>	http://www.delphij.net/
FreeBSD - The Power to Serve!

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