Re: [PATCH] open: O_DIRECTORY and O_CREAT together should fail

[Al Viro <viro@ftp.linux.org.uk>]

On Sat, Sep 24, 2005 at 08:41:05AM +0200, Miklos Szeredi wrote:
> > > Well yes.  But I don't think anybody is using it, and if so they are
> > > clearly breaking the rules in man open(2):
> > 
> > Be liberal in what you accept and all such...  Everything else aside,
> > why bother?
> 
> To conform to well defined semantics?

Well-defined is not exactly the word I'd use for that mess (example -
we still have the last remnant of ancient BSD idiocy in there; the last
case when dangling symlink is still traversed upon object creation,
everything else had been fixed since then).

And O_DIRECTORY is not the only flag that acquires or loses meaning
depending on O_CREAT - consider e.g. O_EXCL.  It's a mess, of course,
but this mess is part of userland ABI.  We tried to fix symlink idiocy,
BTW, on the assumption that nothing would be relying on it.  Didn't
work...
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