From: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
Cc: 33255@debbugs.gnu.org, immerrr again <immerrr@gmail.com>,
Noam Postavsky <npostavs@gmail.com>
Subject: bug#33255: 27.0.50; expand-file-name: default directory expanded twice if relative
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2018 00:42:16 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <o1mupv5b5z.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <fa1b9f5e-ef1a-6cbb-89f3-377d50299de2@cs.ucla.edu> (Paul Eggert's message of "Fri, 23 Nov 2018 12:22:19 -0800")
Paul Eggert wrote:
> By not saying anything POSIX gives permission to the application to
> set HOME to a relative name. When POSIX intends the requirement that
> an environment variable's value must be absolute (e.g., PWD), it says
> so. When it doesn't intend such a requirement (e.g., HOME, PATH,
> SHELL, TMPDIR) it says nothing.
So the justification for implementing this is indeed "it's not
explicitly forbidden".
Here's an example of how this can be confusing:
cd /tmp
mkdir foo
echo hi > foo/bar
HOME=foo emacs
C-x C-f ~/bar ; works
M-: (shell-command "ls ~/bar") ; fails
So, Emacs and external processes it spawns interpret ~ differently;
ie external processes are likely to fail in odd ways. All this would be
avoided if the user had just said HOME=$PWD/foo to start with.
>> I am at this point looking for any documentation (not even from POSIX,
>> any shell or frankly any Unix utility will do) that says "HOME need
>> not be absolute, if not, here's how that is handled".
AFAICS Emacs is the only thing documenting this scenario.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-11-27 5:42 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-11-04 10:54 bug#33255: 27.0.50; expand-file-name: default directory expanded twice if relative immerrr again
2018-11-04 12:27 ` Noam Postavsky
2018-11-05 0:58 ` Glenn Morris
2018-11-13 18:26 ` Paul Eggert
2018-11-13 20:12 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-11-14 18:10 ` Glenn Morris
2018-11-14 18:17 ` Paul Eggert
2018-11-14 19:52 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-11-20 19:11 ` Glenn Morris
2018-11-20 19:26 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-11-20 19:08 ` Glenn Morris
2018-11-20 20:44 ` Paul Eggert
2018-11-22 18:25 ` Glenn Morris
2018-11-23 20:22 ` Paul Eggert
2018-11-27 5:42 ` Glenn Morris [this message]
2018-11-27 18:11 ` Paul Eggert
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