bug#9450: Bug report on 'dirname' : when jokers match several files (original) (raw)

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From: Bob Proulx
Subject: bug#9450: Bug report on 'dirname' : when jokers match several files
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2011 11:36:05 -0600
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)

Laurent TARRISSE wrote:

Just let me explain... we had to reuse unix scripts, primarily written for HP UX

>uname -a HP-UX ppbmo B.11.23 U ia64 3204054692 unlimited-user license

Some of our scripts, who did function perfectly on HP-UX for several years, encountered problems once moved on Linux platform. One reason is due to dirname : on HP UX I can give several arguments to dirname, and as you say, on Linux I cannot. That's all. ;)

On HP-UX if you give several option arguments to dirname then the HP-UX dirname would handle the first argument and then return an error due to the extra arguments. See this example:

$ /usr/bin/dirname /one/two/three /four/five /six/seven /one/two

$ echo $? 1

$ /usr/bin/dirname /one/two/three /one/two

$ echo $? 0

It is an error on HP-UX dirname to supply extra arguments too. But your scripts must be ignoring the error. GNU dirname is simply reporting the error more loudly. :-)

What is your script expecting to happen with the extra arguments? Surely that would also be a bug in your script since those extra arguments are not getting processed.

Bob