GNU bug report logs - #27986
26.0.50; `rename-file' can rename files without confirmation

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From: Philipp Stephani <p.stephani2 <at> gmail.com>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>, 27986 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#27986: 26.0.50; 'rename-file' can rename files without confirmation
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 16:50:33 +0000

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Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu> schrieb am Mo., 14. Aug. 2017 um 01:49 Uhr:

> Getting back to Philipp's original bug report, Apple documentation says
> macOS
> has a facility like the Linux renameat2 system call (i.e., it's like
> 'renameat'
> except it can be told to fail if the destination already exists). Attached
> is a
> proposed patch to use this facility, which means that the
> case-insensitivity
> test would no longer need to be done in macOS. If there's some way to
> implement
> renameat_noreplace on MS-Windows we could get rid of the
> case-insensitivity test
> there too.
>
> I don't have easy access to macOS so I have not installed this patch. It'd
> be
> nice, Philipp, if you could try it out.
>
>
Thanks, the patch fixes the problem. However, it's still not 100% correct:
now casing changes such as from "A" to "a" where macOS treats the file
names as equivalent trigger the "file already exists" signal as well. I
don't think that can be fixed, though; there's no way to special-case
casing changes while keeping atomicity intact. So I'd rather have Emacs
react conservatively and skip the casing check entirely.
Note that the manpage says:

RENAME_EXCL   On file systems that support it (see getattrlist(2)
VOL_CAP_INT_RENAME_EXCL), it will cause EEXIST to be returned if the
destination already exists.

I interpret this such that if the filesystem doesn't support RENAME_EXCL
the rename will succeed even if the destination exists.

Since we probably won't be able to solve all issues across operating
systems and filesystems, probably we should have at least a warning in the
documentation that rename-file attempts to be race-free and atomic, but
only on a best-effort basis.

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