On 11/20/2013 01:45 AM, Pádraig Brady wrote: > Before I merge this I'd like to understand fully > the reason why shred currently defaults to writing > out progressively shorter names. From the source.. > > /* Repeatedly rename a file with shorter and shorter names, > to obliterate all traces of the file name on any system that > adds a trailing delimiter to on-disk file names and reuses > the same directory slot. */
That sounds like the filesystem terminates the file name on disk, e.g. with a NUL character, i.e. during each rename() the last character gets overwritten so that all characters in the original name are changed to the terminating character: 's', 'e', 'c', 'r', 'e', 't', '\0' 's', 'e', 'c', 'r', 'e', '\0', '\0' 's', 'e', 'c', 'r', '\0', '\0', '\0' 's', 'e', 'c', '\0', '\0', '\0', '\0' 's', 'e', '\0', '\0', '\0', '\0', '\0' 's', '\0', '\0', '\0', '\0', '\0', '\0' (Just a guess, of course.) Have a nice day, Berny
