On Tue, 8 Apr 1997 21:28:28 +0100 
 "Graham, James" <James.Graham@Schwab.COM> wrote:

 > Pardon me, but why in the name of <insert deific figure here> would
 > we want "" == ENOENT in pathname lookups?

...it's not so much POSIX.1 "compat" as "compliance".  If you think about
it, "" == "." was just a very cheezy way of getting "foo//bar" to DTRT.
If you handle "foo//bar" differently, you eliminate the need to handle
"" as ".".

Put another way, does opening "" really make any sense?  To me, it violates
the principle of least astonishment for it to succeed.

 > What does it _gain_?

...standards conformance.

Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                               Home: 408.866.1912
NAS: M/S 258-6                                          Work: 415.604.0935
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