Re: coreutils/man/rm.x - fails to mention POSIX "Refuse to remove path/. and path/.., as well as `.' and `..'

[Arsen Arsenović]

Hi,

James Feeney <james@nurealm.net> writes:

> coreutils 9.3
> coreutils/man/rm.x
>
> Even though "rm" was modified,
> ====
> Sat Apr 20 00:03:09 1991  David J. MacKenzie  (djm at geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu)
> ...
> * rm.c (rm): Refuse to remove path/. and path/.., as well as `.' and
>   `..', for POSIX.
> ...
> ====
> the rm(1) man page completely fails to mention this particular POSIX
> promise.
>
> If the user already knows how GNU rm will respond to "rm -rf *", they
> don't need to look at the man page.
>
> If the user does *not* know how GNU rm will respond to "rm -rf *", the
> GNU rm man page is not going to help them.
>
> Language should be added to the GNU rm man page explicitly stating the
> POSIX behavior:
> ====
> If either of the files dot or dot-dot are specified as the basename
> portion of an operand (that is, the final pathname component) or if an
> operand resolves to the root directory, rm shall write a diagnostic
> message to standard error and do nothing more with such operands.
> ====
> including the additional requirement with respect to the root
> directory.

This is specified in the manual:

>    Any attempt to remove a file whose last file name component is ‘.’
> or ‘..’ is rejected without any prompting, as mandated by POSIX.

See (coreutils)rm invocation, paragraph 5.

Have a lovely night.
-- 
Arsen Arsenović

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