From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 19:39:09 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] git: continue alias lookup on EACCES errors
Message-ID: <20120328193909.GB29019@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20120328184014.GA8982@burratino>

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 01:40:14PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 11:31:10AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> > Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> >> Example: when I try
> >>
> >>  :; mkdir $HOME/cannotread
> >>  :; chmod -x $HOME/cannotread
> >>  :; echo nonsense >$HOME/bin/cat
> >>  :; chmod -x $HOME/bin/cat
> >>  :; PATH=$HOME/cannotread:$HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
> >>  :; cat /etc/fstab
> >>
> >> the shell uses /bin/cat without complaint.
> >
> > Yeah, but I think that the case Peff is worried about is:
> >
> >         $ >~/bin/nosuch
> >         $ nosuch
> >         nosuch: Permission denied
> 
> Just remembering the EACCES and reporting it when no alias exists
> would take care of that, no?  In other words, this seems analogous
> to the example of a non-executable "cat" that is reported if no
> other cat exists but does not prevent /bin/cat from being run.

That's what the patch I posted earlier does. But it means we _also_
report "permission denied" for inaccessible directories, which is
needlessly confusing (and much more common, I would think).

-Peff