Jeff Garzik wrote: >> >> What the *at() interfaces really do is fix/paper over a longstanding >> wart in Unix: the cwd really should have been a standard file descriptor >> (like stdin/stdout/stderr) instead of a magic piece of state maintained >> in kernel space. > > It's more than a wart, IMO. *at() allows one to close races (with > potential security implications) that are otherwise impossible to close, > in directory traversal. > > *at() permits a userspace program to hold proper references to all > objects during a directory traversal, with all that implies. > Well, as Jeremy pointed out, in the absence of threads you can do the same thing with fchdir(), however, that's much more of a hack. -hpa - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
