[PATCH] ls & "magic" cygdrive dir (was: RE: cygdrive stuff)

Mon Sep 24 12:25:00 GMT 2001

Corinna wrote:
>> Is that more or less clear?
> More or less. How shall that work correctly? Assume a user
> creates a /dev/tty file. ls -l /dev/tty results in
>> crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 5, 1 Sep 24 14:54 /dev/tty
>> and the listing of the directory shows that entry, too. Then the
> fhandler wants to list the devices. It would list tty again unless
> it would check the listing of the real device for legal device
> entries and marks tty as already listed or so.
It would have to do that anyway (IMHO): as ye never know what a user 
might be up to, it would have to check whether actual files & 
directories exist before listing the magic ones. The only problem I 
forsee is that they might start conflicting with eachother - i.e. if I 
make a *file* called /dev/tty and I write stuff to it, it might end up 
in the file in stead of the device.
I wouldn't mind having the fhandler just not allow actual file vs. 
device conflicts - let the "magic" one override the actual one, and 
remove the actual one if it's offensive. /dev is no place for files 
anyway - it's like storing data in a void, storing icecream in a 
volcano: it doesn't last, it's not a good idea, and noone in his/her 
right mind would do it.. Symlinks are another matter, but the same 
precedence would apply: symlinks are meant to make life a bit easier, 
but don't contain any actual data, so if an magic dir would conflict 
with a symlink, the symlink would have to go..
Perhaps a force option/flag would be nice for this, though - so as to 
protect the unwitting (non-reading; documentation-illiterate) user a 
bit..
> I don't want to define special requirements here. I'm just thinking
> that a file system fhandler like /dev should list the real files
> (if they exist) _and_ the virtual devices. I don't think that's
> a requirement for a /cygdrive fhandler or a /registry fhandler.
> They could but they don't have to.
In the case of both /cygdrive and /registry, I simply wouldn't allow the 
existance of real files - though Win32 will mess that up, ofcourse.
Greetz!
Ronald
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