The tale of aux.c

> But my answer is: No, I will not deface the mailx source code in order to make life easier for customers of a vendor of non-Unix systems who chose to clutter his directory name space with useless entries. I will especially not do so as this vendor has threatened free software on several occasions.

> The Heirloom Project is oriented at the Unix tradition, and it is free. If you want to use mailx, there is the technically and morally sane option of using a free Unix implementation. You are on your own if you choose against it.

This guy sounds like a real pain in the ass.

Re: The tale of aux.c

#6

Post by steveklabnik » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 11:43 PM UTC

pcwalton wrote: post #2

We ran into this issue in Servo too. https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/1226

I ran into it while trying to clone the source for Minix, just to poke around and read the code. (I think it was COM and not AUX but same principle)

Re: The tale of aux.c

#7

Post by DiabloD3 » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 11:43 PM UTC

monochromatic wrote: post #5

> But my answer is: No, I will not deface the mailx source code in order to make life easier for customers of a vendor of non-Unix systems who chose to clutter his directory name space with useless entries. I will especially not do so as this vendor has threatened free software on several occasions. > The Heirloom Project is oriented at the Unix tradition, and it is free. If you want to use mailx, there is the techni…

It doesn't even make sense to hold this position. Aux.c isn't even a usefully descriptive name for a file you'd find in a mua.

Re: The tale of aux.c

#8

Post by trothamel » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 11:46 PM UTC

Even if Microsoft keeps this behavior, I'm surprised they don't modify it to check the filename extension. It's one thing to change a device like CON that people might expect to exist, but it seems like not distinguishing CON and con.c is just asking for trouble.

Re: The tale of aux.c

#9

Post by tyingq » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 11:55 PM UTC

DiabloD3 wrote: post #7

monochromatic wrote: post #5

> But my answer is: No, I will not deface the mailx source code in order to make life easier for customers of a vendor of non-Unix systems who chose to clutter his directory name space with useless entries. I will especially not do so as this vendor has threatened free software on several occasions. > The Heirloom Project is oriented at the Unix tradition, and it is free. If you want to use mailx, there is the techni…

It doesn't even make sense to hold this position. Aux.c isn't even a usefully descriptive name for a file you'd find in a mua.

A legacy requirement to not ever have any files with a basename of CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, or LPT9 doesn't make sense either :)

Re: The tale of aux.c

#10

Post by dfox » Mon, Sep 25, 2017, 11:58 PM UTC

trothamel wrote: post #8

Even if Microsoft keeps this behavior, I'm surprised they don't modify it to check the filename extension. It's one thing to change a device like CON that people might expect to exist, but it seems like not distinguishing CON and con.c is just asking for trouble.

That behavior is intentional and is workaround for programs that does not let user change file extension on saving.