[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #63265] rmdir fails to remove directory containing read-only files

[Markus Mützel]

Update of bug #63265 (project octave):

                  Status:               Confirmed => Patch Submitted        

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Follow-up Comment #10:

It looks like `mkdir` fails in this case because `unlink` fails to unlink the
read-only file.

Reading the POSIX documentation of "unlink", it is not entirely clear to me
what is supposed to happen in this case. Afaict, there is no one-to-one
equivalent to a read-only file attribute on POSIX:
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/unlink.2.html

The documentation on MSDN is pretty clear that the Microsoft implementation of
the function with a similar name is supposed to fail in this case:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/c-runtime-library/reference/unlink-wunlink?view=msvc-170
> Each of these functions returns 0 if successful. Otherwise, the function
returns -1 and sets errno to EACCES, which means the path specifies a
read-only file or a directory, or to ENOENT, which means the file or path
isn't found.

In any case, Matlab's `rmdir` doesn't seem to care about the read-only flag.
So, this is at least a compatibility issue for that function.

The attached patch modifies `unlink` to also delete files that have their
read-only attribute set. That also allow `rmdir` to remove directories that
contain such files.

Alternatively, we could keep the current version of `unlink` that errors when
trying to delete files with read-only attribute and add a new version that
ignores the read-only attribute.

Any opinions?

(file #53909)

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Additional Item Attachment:

File name: bug63265-unlink-read-only-files.patch Size:1 KB
   
<https://file.savannah.gnu.org/file/bug63265-unlink-read-only-files.patch?file_id=53909>



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