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[bug-gnulib] Re: getcwd fixes for bugs in glibc, Solaris, OpenBSD, ...


From: Paul Eggert
Subject: [bug-gnulib] Re: getcwd fixes for bugs in glibc, Solaris, OpenBSD, ...
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 20:43:33 -0800
User-agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.3 (gnu/linux)

Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:

> IMHO, getcwd needs two changes: use the link-copying approach if possible,
> and resort to using the O(n) openat approach.

How about if we use the system getcwd if it works, and fall back on
our own code if the system getcwd has problems?  In the typical
case, if the system getcwd succeeds, or fails for any reason other
than ERANGE, ENAMETOOLONG or ENOENT, we can simply use its result.

Advantages of this approach: it's simpler and easier to maintain,
since we needn't know about the multiple ways Linux systems use to
support getcwd (system calls, symlinks, bugs, etc.)

I see two disadvantages of this approach: (1) we'll still have
performance problems on Linux systems with kernel bugs (since we can't
trust their getcwd implementation at all -- autoconf will detect this
for us), and (2) we'll do about double the work if the working
directory is slightly longer than PATH_MAX.  But (1) is a dying
problem (2.4.19 and 2.4.20 kernels only, as far as I know), and (2) is
a rare one.




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