This report follows a previous report about dirname's info page and
manpage: http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=6175
dirname's info page is now IMO correct and quite clear in its
description of dirname's behavior:
`dirname' prints all but the final slash-delimited component of NAME.
Slashes on either side of the final component are also removed. If the
string contains no slash, `dirname' prints `.' (meaning the current
directory).
However, the manpage is still confusing. It used to read:
> Print NAME with its trailing /component removed; if NAME contains no
> /'s, output `.' (meaning the current directory).
It now reads:
Output NAME with its last non-slash component and trailing slashes removed; if
NAME contains no /'s, output `.' (meaning the current directory).
First, it's unclear what kind of component this refers to. A slash is
not a pathname component, therefore "non-slash component" would seem
equivalent to simply "component". If one understands "component" as
pathname component, then the description becomes equivalent for the
typical case of "/foo/bar" to:
> Output "/foo/bar" with its last component and trailing slashes removed.
That would, in my understanding, mean outputting "/foo/" (there are no
trailing slashes in "/foo/bar"). But dirname would actually output
"/foo", removing the last slash in the result.
I would recommend adopting the same description as the one used in the
info page.
By the way, the short description reads:
strip last component from file name
In POSIX terminology, this sounds like "take a filename, output
nothing". "from a pathname" would make more sense.
