Re: fileutils: inconsistent behaviour stripping / from end of filenames

[Jim Meyering]

Paul Eggert <eggert@twinsun.com> wrote:

>> Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 09:18:37 +0100 (BST)
>> From: Edward Avis <epa98@doc.ic.ac.uk>
>>
>> What does POSIX say about 'rm -r FOO' and 'rm -r FOO/'?
>
> If FOO is a symbolic link to a directory, then POSIX 1003.1-200x d7
> says 'rm -r FOO' removes only the link FOO, and 'rm -r FOO/' removes
> only the directory FOO/ (and all files underneath it).  This relies on
> the fact that rmdir("FOO/") removes the directory FOO/ (assuming it is
> empty).
>
>> If DOUGAL is a directory, then 'rm -r DOUGAL', 'rm -r DOUGAL/', 'rm
>> -r DOUGAL//' and so on should all work.
>
> That's right.

Doesn't POSIX require `rm -r dir/'
to be treated just like `rm -r dir/.' ?

The latter gets an error with GNU rm:

  $ rm -r dir/.
  rm: cannot remove `.' or `..'
  [Exit 1]