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From: | GNU bug Tracking System |
Subject: | bug#45258: closed (mkdir man page unclear in describing -m flag) |
Date: | Tue, 15 Dec 2020 20:01:01 +0000 |
Your message dated Tue, 15 Dec 2020 12:00:49 -0800 with message-id <38f8d820-9eb9-fb6c-c7cb-e86c3c7bb667@cs.ucla.edu> and subject line Re: bug#45258: mkdir man page unclear in describing -m flag has caused the debbugs.gnu.org bug report #45258, regarding mkdir man page unclear in describing -m flag to be marked as done. (If you believe you have received this mail in error, please contact help-debbugs@gnu.org.) -- 45258: http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=45258 GNU Bug Tracking System Contact help-debbugs@gnu.org with problems
--- Begin Message ---Subject: mkdir man page unclear in describing -m flag Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2020 09:48:04 -0800 I like to present a challenge to my software engineer friends: can you tell me what this command does on Linux, if run in an empty directory?mkdir -m 0755 -p ./usr/bin/fooIf they read the mkdir man page (https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/mkdir.1.html), they almost always say the answer is:- create the directory ./usr, with the mode 0755- create the directory ./usr/bin, with the mode 0755- create the directory ./usr/bin/foo, with the mode 0755They are wrong. (Side note -- this misunderstanding contributed to one of the scariest outages Google has ever seen, https://www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/2012/083012b.html).What it actually does:- create the directory ./usr, with the mode based on the umask- create the directory ./usr/bin, with the mode based on the umask- create the directory ./usr/bin/foo, with the mode 0755I tried at the time to get the man page corrected, but I was told at the time that nobody reads man pages, and the info page is correct, so it won't be fixed.I figured after almost 10 years, perhaps thinking has evolved. Can we fix the man page?I have a suggested fix: the current man page reads:-p, --parents
no error if existing, make parent directories as neededI can be updated to read:-p, --parentstheir file permission bits to the umask modified by ‘u+wx’.
no error if existing, make parent directories as needed, settingI copied the new text from the info page.Thanks!Chris
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--- Begin Message ---Subject: Re: bug#45258: mkdir man page unclear in describing -m flag Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2020 12:00:49 -0800 Thanks for your bug report. I installed the attached patch; although it doesn't use the exact wording you proposed, I hope it works well enough. User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.5.0 0001-doc-document-mkdir-m-p-better.patch
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