Re: $(pwd) != $(/bin/pwd)

[Chet Ramey]

On 1/6/10 1:46 PM, Stephane CHAZELAS wrote:
> 2010-01-05 16:40:50 -0500, Chet Ramey:
>>> Well, if I read
>>> http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/pwd.html
>>> correctly, bash pwd should output /home/darkk/bar in that case
>>> as $PWD does *not* contain an absolute path to the current
>>> directory.
>>
>> Bash notices this when running in posix mode, and recanonicalizes the
>> pathname.  By default, it does not.
>>
>>> Having said that, ksh93, ash and zsh behave like bash, pdksh and
>>> its derivatives being the only ones that behave as POSIX
>>> requires.
>>
>> Bash behaves as Posix requires when running in posix mode.  When it's not,
>> it does the same thing as other shells.
> [...]
> 
> OK, that's fine then.
> 
> Any reason for not doing it when not in POSIX mode? Could the
> output of pwd changing while no change of directory has been
> made ever be more of a problem than $(pwd) not reflecting the
> current directory.

Not really, other than the potentially expensive directory traversal to
do a couple of stat(2) calls.  I don't really think this is much of a
problem at all.  How often does the directory change out from under a
shell process, after which it calls pwd?

Chet
-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/