severity 14728 minor stop Hello, sorry for the delay.
On 06/28/2013 07:22 PM, Josh Triplett wrote: > On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 09:55:53AM +0200, Stefano Lattarini wrote: >> On 06/27/2013 06:37 AM, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek wrote: >>> Hi, >>> I encountered this in systemd, which recently added a file with >>> a dash in the name [1]. >>> >> I fear this falls in the category "Doctor, it hurts when I do that >> -- Don't do that, then" :-) >> >> To elaborate, on Unix systems, having filenames starting with a >> dash has always been very problematic, and generally a terrible >> idea. Do you have a very, *very* good reason to have such a file? > > One obvious reason: as part of a test suite for just such a problem. > I'm not sure this qualifies as a "very good reason", sorry. Anyone on Unix using system files whose name start with a dash deserves to suffer a bit ;-) >>> Basically, various commands like install and rm are called >>> without guarding the file list with --, >>> >> That's because such usage might be unportable; well, it surely was >> in the olden days, but I'm not sure whether that is still relevant >> on today's system. Still, I'm not comfortable changing the old >> assumption and risking regressions for the users of oldish or >> proprietary systems. > > Putting -- before the file list might not be portable, but prefixing > filenames starting with a - with ./ seems completely portable. Would > that work? > Yes, but it might complicate or slow down the code, and I think it's not really worth spending time on it. I won't refuse a patch in this direction though, *if* it doesn't complicate or slow-down the code. Otherwise, I will close this bug as "wontfix" sometime in the nearish future. Thanks, Stefano
