Re: [PATCH] ls: issue error message on removed directory

[Bernhard Voelker]

On 2/11/20 8:41 PM, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> On 11/02/2020 10:45, Colin Watson wrote:
> > If the current directory has been removed, then "ls" confusingly
> > produced no output and no error message, indistinguishable from the case
> > of running on an empty directory.  It makes more sense to report ENOENT
> > in this case.
>
> I don't think this is a general solution as the opendir() spec states:
> https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/opendir.html
> "The directory entries for dot and dot-dot are optional".
> I've also seen reference to FUSE file systems that don't provide those entries.

ls(1) does already run into ENOENT:

  $ strace /usr/bin/ls
  [...snipped...]
  openat(AT_FDCWD, ".", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_CLOEXEC|O_DIRECTORY) = 3
  fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=0, ...}) = 0
  getdents64(3, 0x55d8a0813f30, 32768)    = -1 ENOENT (No such file or 
directory)
  close(3)                                = 0
  close(1)                                = 0
  close(2)                                = 0
  exit_group(0)                           = ?
  +++ exited with 0 +++

... so it seems that it only swallows errno, doesn't it?

Have a nice day,
Berny