Hi John,
you wrote...
> Can someone please tell me if there's any reason not to write files
> in /private/tmp rather than in /tmp/501/TemporaryItems ?
>
> drwxrwxrwt 29 root wheel 986 18 Jan 21:49 tmp
> drwxr-xr-x 13 jd wheel 442 18 Jan 21:30 TemporaryItems
>
> So far as jd and admin there's never been a problem, but would there
> be a problem if I were a user with fewer privileges?
The big difference between the two locations seems to be that anyone can
read the files you drop into /tmp, while the files in /tmp/501 are
protected from prying eyes. You can of course change the permissions on
files that you make in /tmp so as to shield the contents (or change your
umask), but you have the additional problem of not being able to
overwrite a temp file owned by someone else. See File::Temp (standard
module) for a nice, safe interface to the whole temporary file business.
With regards to writing there's no problem: as per the permissions
above, anyone can drop a file into the /tmp directory, but only the
owner (or an admin using sudo or suchlike) can delete it.
Cheers,
Paul
