Re: `rmdir .` doesn't work in 2.4

[Andrea Arcangeli]

On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 11:50:44PM +0100, [e-mail] wrote:
>     From: Andrea Arcangeli <[e-mail]>
> 
>     > But in fact it fails with EINVAL, and
>     > 
>     > [EINVAL]: The path argument contains a last component that is dot.
> 
>     I can't confirm. The specs I'm checking are here:
> 
>         http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xsh/rmdir.html
> 
> That is the SUSv2 text, one of the ingredients for the new
> POSIX standard. I quoted the current Austin draft, the current
> draft for the next version of the POSIX standard.
> 
> Quoting a text fragment:
> 
>         The rmdir( ) function shall remove a directory whose name is given by
>         path. The directory is removed only if it is an empty directory.
>         If the directory is the root directory or the current working
>         directory of any process, it is unspecified whether the function
>         succeeds, or whether it shall fail and set errno to [EBUSY].
>         If path names a symbolic link, then rmdir( ) shall fail and
>         set errno to [ENOTDIR]. If the path argument refers to a path
>         whose final component is either dot or dot-dot, rmdir( ) shall
>         fail. ...

I trust your specs said so, however I'm not sure which are the specs
we should follow for Linux.

At least for LFS 2.2.x fixage I always followed the SuSv2 specs and they
doesn't even say that rmdir can return -EINVAL. So returning -EINVAL is wrong
in first place according to SuSv2.

> from the directory "foo", but rmdir("foo/.") does not finish
> by removing the name "." from the directory "foo".

Sure. Also `rmdir .` doesn't mean remove "." from current directory but it
means "remove the directory pointed out by path `.'". The kernel/We definitely
knows which is such directory. That is in sync with the specs: "The rmdir()
function removes a directory whose name is given by path". You agree that the
path "." identifys one directory.

Andrea