Usefulness of access(2) - (nf)

[Kenneth Almquist]

I see little need for a function to check for access permission on a file
by the effective user/group id.  Simply doing a stat(2) on the file will
achieve the same result.

The problems with the proposed pathaccess system call are twofold.  First,
it would require a lot more work to implement than access.  Access simply
resets the effective id's temporarily and calls nami to check the permissions;
the proposed new call would have to do its own path search.

The second problem has to do with security.  Access will perform a directory
search even if the effective user id doesn't have execute permission on a
directory.  In the case of the more general call, care would have to be taken
to ensure that such searches didn't create a security hole.
					Kenneth Almquist