Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 13:49:28 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Robert Hoehne <robert DOT hoehne AT mathematik DOT tu-chemnitz DOT de>
Cc: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: V2 alpha 980908 -- two problems with strip
In-Reply-To: <199609090348.XAA28882@delorie.com>
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960911132857.13314C-100000@is>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

It seems that `strip' has problems with the notorious DOS "d:path" 
drive-relative pathnames.  "strip b:/prog.exe" works, but if I say
"strip b:prog.exe", I get this:

	strip.exe: b:prog.exe: rename: Improper link (EXDEV)

This means that library function `rename' got two pathnames that are
on different drives, so it refuses to rename the file.  I looked at the 
code of `rename', and it only checks the first letter of the pathname and 
that the second character is a colon, which seems OK:

  /* Fail with EXDEV, if old and new aren't on the same device.  */
  if (old[1] == ':')
    old_dev = toupper(old[0]) - 'A';
  else
    old_dev = getdisk();
  if (new[1] == ':')
    new_dev = toupper(new[0]) - 'A';
  else
    new_dev = getdisk();
  if (old_dev != new_dev)
    {
      errno = EXDEV;
      return -1;
    }

So it seems that `rename' gets incorrect pathnames in this case.

Another problem is in the case when there are excessive slashes, like 
this:

	strip b://prog.exe

In that case, prog.exe is NOT stripped, but a temp file named b:/staaaaaa 
is left which seems to be the stripped binary.  (I've bumped on this 
while testing GNU `install -s'; the excess slash is added by `install' 
but they usually don't make any problems in DJGPP, because `put_path' 
strips the redundant slashes, leaving only one.)  So I'd guess that some 
code in `strip' tries to parse the pathname, and fails in case of more 
than one slash between any given pathname parts.

Curiously enough, the hackyish version of `strip', that Robert sent me 
before the last snapshot hit the alpha site, doesn't have the last 
problem (it does have the first one, though).

Advice of an old porter to DOS: if the code that assumes too much about
the shape of the pathnames (like that the first character must be a slash)
is scattered across the program, it might be easier to call `_fixpath' on
every argv[i] at the beginning of `main' and later only check the colon as
a directory separator (together with the slash).