*BSD News Article 12754


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From: sef@Kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Subject: Re: A challenge to all true kernel hackers - conditional symlinks.
Date: 14 Mar 1993 14:45:08 -0800
Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd.
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References: <C3ow4H.FID@BitBlocks.com> <C3qzGI.38q@sugar.neosoft.com> <1nqnchINNerd@life.ai.mit.edu> <C3v4MD.LFE@sugar.neosoft.com>
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In article <C3v4MD.LFE@sugar.neosoft.com> peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>> >	  ln -s /usr/i18n//lang/docs /usr/docs
>Why? These file names are *only* in symbolic links, which programs should
>treat as textual substitutions. They're not legal file names (see POSIX
>1003.1) so there's no conflict.

1003.1 says that, with the exception of the initial slash, any set of
two or more slashes is to be treated as a single slash.  For the initial
slash, three or more are to be treated as a single slash, and two initial
slashes is allowed to be "special" -- but it must be implementation defined,
if so.

"/usr/i18n//lang/docs" is a perfectly valid POSIX filename.