Nullpath in system calls considered harmful?

[Larry McVoy]

In article <613 at uva.UUCP{ dik at uva.UUCP (Casper H.S. Dik) writes:
{In article <88368 at sun.uucp> lm at sun.UUCP (Larry McVoy) writes:
{>	A question for oldtimers: is there any good reason that null paths
{>    (ie, open("", flags)) should NOT be considered an error.  If you don't
		^^
{I'm not an oldtimer, but I think that disallowing the null path
{would break many programs.
{
{The main reason why kernels translate "" into "." is beacause of paths
{containing //. Try:
{% cp -i vmunix /

A number of people misinterpreted my question.  When I say ``null path'' I do
not mean ``null path component''.  I mean a path where strlen(path) == 0,
*path == 0, etc, etc.  

Larry McVoy, Lachman Associates.			  My opinions are that.