RE: Possible bug: d does not seem to read ~/.d.conf

["Dave Korn" <dave dot korn at artimi dot com>]

On 10 August 2007 16:22, Thorsten Kampe wrote:


> The problem (/my/ problem and maybe Ronald's) is that d reads the home
> directory from /etc/passwd and not from the environment variable
> $HOME. In my setup these differ.

  Is that even valid?  Hmmm.  Posix does say:

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/xbd_chap08.html
"  HOME
    The system shall initialize this variable at the time of login to be a pathname of the user's home directory. See <pwd.h>.  "

but then again, it also says:

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/xbd_chap03.html
"   3.192 Home Directory
The directory specified by the HOME environment variable.  "

and also:

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/sh.html
"  HOME
    Determine the pathname of the user's home directory. The contents of HOME are used in tilde expansion as described in Tilde Expansion. This volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 specifies the effects of this variable only for systems supporting the User Portability Utilities option.  "

although that last one was revised in Issue 6:

"  In the ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES section, the text "user's home directory" is updated to "directory referred to by the HOME environment variable".  "

> In my opinion $HOME should take precedence over the home directory set
> in /etc/passwd.

  I think it's kind of ambiguous.  The 'd' man page specifically refers to ".d.conf in the user's home directory", as opposed to "~/.d.conf"; I think those two definitions are allowed to diverge, from what I quoted above.  The spec is unclear: how can you initialise HOME from "the user's home directory", if whatever the user's home directory is is only defined in terms of the contents of $HOME, without reference to field #6 in /etc/passwd?  That would be a circular reference to uninitialised data, that would!

    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....


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