On 17/11/15 20:37, Bob Proulx wrote: > Adam Brenner wrote: >> I have an enhancement requests and patch ready for unlink to support >> multiple arguments. Currently unlink does not accept more than one >> argument to remove a link. I have a patch that adds that >> functionality. For example: >> >> $ unlink link1 link2 link3 > > Why are you using unlink here instead of rm? I think you are using > the wrong tool for the job. Why even care if unlink can take multiple > arguments? > > It used to be that unlink existed for tasks such as allowing the > superuser to unlink the ".." entry from a directory. Which was one > additional layer in a chroot to prevent crawling out of it. Which was > why the older documentation mentions needing sufficient privileges. > This unlinking of ".." isn't allowed anymore on recent file systems > and other container practices have appeared making this practice > obsolete.
Good info thanks. Yes rm will not unlink() a dir. >> Is this something the community would like for me to submit? > > I do not have a strong opinion. Traditional Unix systems only allowed > one argument and no options. *BSD now allows multiple arguments and > includes various options. It would be nice to be compatible with *BSD. I'm not sure they do? Note the rm and unlink man pages are merged in FreeBSD at least, which might confuse things. thanks, Pádraig
