access permissions in 1003.1

[David A Willcox]

Submitted-by: willcox at urbana.mcd.mot.com (David A Willcox)

mib at geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Michael I Bushnell) writes:

>   Let us not. Let us RTFS instead.

>Sigh.  RTFS, of course, stands for Read The Source.  

Actually, at least in this context, RTFS should be taken as "Read the
f-ing Standard", which in this case is unambiguous: the owner of a
"mode 040" file cannot read it.  What seems to be confusing people (at
least the ones who actually DID read the standard) is all of the stuff
about "alternative protection schemes".  That's all in there to permit
security enhancements like security labels (an "unclassified" process
can never read ANY "secret" files) and access control lists (I'll let
fred and george read the file, and harry write it when he is logged in
as group "operator").

>Since
>nobody but the FSF seems to want real Posix.1 compliance and ANSI C
>compliance in one system, I guess Reat The Standard will not be a good
>clue to the behavior of Posix compliance claiming systems.

I don't think that that's true.  I know of at least three vendors who
are at least striving to support ANSI C and POSIX.1 on the same
system.  It can be done.  The headers get pretty ugly, though.

David A. Willcox		"Just say 'NO' to universal drug testing"
Motorola MCG - Urbana		UUCP: ...!uiucuxc!udc!willcox
1101 E. University Ave.		INET: willcox at urbana.mcd.mot.com
Urbana, IL 61801		FONE: 217-384-8534


Volume-Number: Volume 23, Number 93