On Fri, 20 Oct 2000, Bert Driehuis wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Oct 2000, Matthew Orgass wrote:
> >   POSIX allows trailing slashes to refer to a directory.
> 
> Even if the directory doesn't exist yet? That is the core of the
> argument, which when the discussion died down a couple of years ago was
> entirely unresolved.

  Yes.  This was resolved when Greg Woods quoted from a draft version of
POSIX and someone else confirmed that the final standard contained the
same language.  See:
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-kern/2000/09/25/0020.html
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-kern/2000/09/25/0021.html

> Problem is, it is dereferencing the directory, because "/foo/bar/" could
> be read as "/foo/bar/." (it is in NetBSD and BSD/OS anyway, and this
> implementation could not be disproved as Posixly correct at the time). 

  This is incorrect, just as treating multiple slashes in the path as /./
is incorrect;  additional slashes refer to the directory and are the same
as one slash (or, in the case of a trailing directory, none).  The only
exception is that the interpretation of exactly two beginning slashes is
implementation dependent.

Matthew Orgass
darkstar@pgh.net