Re: tests: dis/allow '.' in PATH?

[Kamil Dudka]

On Tuesday, November 23, 2021 11:19:22 PM CET Bernhard Voelker wrote:
> GNU findutils got a bug report for a failing test in the testsuite [1].
> It turned out that the calling environment had the current directory '.'
> in PATH.  This triggered a warning in `find -execdir ...` and therefore
> made some tests fail.
> 
> [1] https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-findutils/2021-11/msg00004.html
> 
> Of course, the findutils tests could (and probably will) remove '.' from
> PATH, but I wonder if this should or should not be done for other packages
> via a change in 'tests/init.sh' as well?
> If a certain test needs '.' in the PATH, it will have to add it anyway.
> 
> Any comments?

Note that having an "empty item" in PATH will have the same effect as
having '.' in PATH, according to POSIX [1]:

    A zero-length prefix is a legacy feature that indicates the current
    working directory.  It appears as two adjacent <colon> characters
    ( "::" ), as an initial <colon> preceding the rest of the list, or
    as a trailing <colon> following the rest of the list.

Kamil

[1] 
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap08.html#tag_08_03