Re: Strange message from updatedb

[Eric Blake]

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This was reported on the cygwin list.  Basically, updatedb --prunepaths is
fundamentally broken, because it uses a space instead of PATH_SEPARATOR as
the separator between directory names, which conflicts with uses of space
in directory names.

A workaround was suggested of using . instead of ' ' in directory names
that must be pruned, since that is the regex character that would match a
space, and thus still filter the problematically named directory.  If
- --prunepaths is not adjusted to use a different separator character, then
the documentation should be updated to mention this workaround.

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: Strange message from updatedb
> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 13:50:48 -0500
> From: Phil Edwards <phil.m.edwards AT gmail DOT com>
> To: Furash Gary <furashg AT mcao DOT maricopa DOT gov>
> CC: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
>
> On 2/27/07, Furash Gary wrote:
> > /cygdrive/c/System\ Volume\ Information
>
> Quotes and backslashes aren't going to solve the problem, I think.  I
> looked at updatedb (it's a shell script), and the --prunepaths
> argument is passed through a sed script which replaces spaces in order
> to turn it all into a regexp.  There's no way of telling sed to avoid
> some spaces and translate others.
>
> You used to be able to set the internal PRUNEREGEX variable directly,
> in a .conf file, but apparently that file is only used under Linux
> versions of updatedb, or something.
>
> Most lists of dirs are passed around with colon (or some such)
> separators to avoid just such problems with paths containing
> whitespace.  updatedb is still living in the 80's.
>

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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