.
Last update: 1997-05-20
9945-2-19
Class: The unaddressed issue
The standard does not speak to this issue, and as such no conformance
distinction can be made between alternative implementations based on this.
This is being referred to the Sponsors of the standard for clarifying
wording in the next amendment.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Topic: pax
Relevant Sections: 4.48.3
Defect Report:
-----------------------
In Section 4.48.3 - Options {of pax}, the standard describes
the -i option:
Interactively rename files or archive members.
For each archive member matching a pattern operand
or file matching a file operand, a prompt shall be
written to the file /dev/tty. The prompt shall
contain the name of the file or archive member,
but is otherwise unspecified. A line shall then
be read from /dev/tty. If this line is blank, the
file or archive member shall be skipped. If this
line consists of a single period, the file or
archive member shall be processed with no
modification to its name. Otherwise, its name
shall be replaced with the contents of the line.
The pax utility shall immediately exit with a
nonzero exit status if end-of-file is encountered
when reading a response or if /dev/tty cannot be
opened for reading and writing.
[Draft 12 of ISO/IEC 9945-2:1993 (July 1992), p. 402, lines
7772-7783]
The standard previously stated, in Section 4.48.2 -
Description {of pax}, that ``if the selected archive format
supports the specification of linked files, it shall be an
error if these files cannot be linked when the archive is
extracted. Any of the various names in the archive that
represent a file can be used to select the file for
extraction.'' [Ibid., p. 401, lines 7741-7744]
If an attempt is made to extract a file from a ustar archive
based on a link-name to a previous member of the archive
that had been renamed using the -i option, does the file get
linked to the new name, or is this an error condition?
WG15 response for 9945-2:1993
-----------------------------------
The standard is silent on this issue, allowing any behavior in this
area. Concern over the wording of this section has been forwarded to the
Sponsors of the standard.
Rationale for Interpretation:
-----------------------------
None.
_____________________________________________________________________________