GNU bug report logs - #41001
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘test’: File exists

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From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: Jonny Grant <jg <at> jguk.org>
Cc: 41001 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
Subject: bug#41001: mkdir: cannot create directory ‘test’: File exists
Date: Fri, 1 May 2020 11:07:48 -0700

On 5/1/20 9:16 AM, Jonny Grant wrote:
> rm: cannot remove 'test': Is a directory

That's because rm used unlink which failed with EISDIR, which is a different
error number.

Consider this example:

    $ >d # Create an empty regular file.
    $ mkdir d
    mkdir: cannot create directory ‘d’: File exists

Here the system call mkdir("d", 0777) failed with errno == EEXIST (File exists).
Presumably you wouldn't object to the diagnostic here because d is a regular
file, not a directory. But the mkdir system call fails in exactly the same way
if d is a directory, so the error message is the same in both cases.

Directories are files, so the error message is correct even if it confused you.
I don't see any portable and efficient way to make the diagnostic less confusing
for you, without also making diagnostic incorrect in some other scenarios (such
as the scenario described above).

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