Re: fdatasync() error in shred from coreutils-5.2.1 on AIX 5.2

[Jim Meyering]

Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:
> Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:
>
>>      * src/shred.c (incname): Decrement `len' only once per loop iteration.
>
> Ouch.  Thanks, good catch.  That's what I get for testing and then
> changing later.
>
>> What's the harm in leaving the lower case letters in the list?
>> Sure, in some pathological cases, that'd lead to some wasted time
>> on case-insensitive systems, but I don't see any portability problem.
>
> You're right.  Sorry, somehow I got confused about 8.3 filesystems
> (where the code will rapidly decrease the length to 8 anyway).  Here's
> a patch to (mostly) revert that.
>
> 2004-05-17  Paul Eggert  <address@hidden>
>
>       * src/shred.c (names): Bring back lower-case letters, "_", and
>       ".".  But continue to omit +, =, %, @, #, as they're either
>       shell metacharacters (for some shells) or are not in some
>       character sets, or (in the case of '%') must be a
>       metacharacter somewhere.

Thanks.  I've applied it.

Why does it matter if we use shell meta-characters here?
Are you thinking about the possibility that some concurrent
`glob' would expand to contain one of these temporary names?