This is required by symlink(7), ``Commands not traversing a file tree''
subsection, third paragraph:
: It is important to realize that this rule includes commands which may
: optionally traverse file trees, e.g. the command ``chown file'' is
: included in this rule, while the command ``chown -R file'' is not.
For chown(8) and chgrp(1), this is also is compliance with the latest
POSIX 1003.1-200x draft.
MFC after: 1 week
interface, and statically link them to the programs using them.
These functions, upon reflection and discussion, are too generically
named for a library interface with such specific functionality.
Also the api that they use, whilst ok for private use, isn't good
enough for a libc function.
Additionally there were complications with the build/install-world
process. It depends heavily upon xinstall, which got broken by
the change in api, and caused bootstrap problems and general mayhem.
There is work in progress to address future problems that may be
caused by changes in install-chain tools, and better names for
{g|s}etflags can be derived when some future program requires them.
For now the code has been left in src/lib/libc/gen (it started off
in src/bin/ls).
It's important to provide library functions for manipulating file
flag strings if we ever want this interface to be adopted outside
of the source tree, but now isn't necessarily the right moment
with 4.0-release just around the corner.
Approved: jkh
string to u_long and back using two functions, flags_to_string and
string_to_flags, which co-existed with 'ls'. As time has progressed
more and more other tools have used these private functions to
manipulate the file flags.
Recently I moved these functions from /usr/src/bin/ls to libutil,
but after some discussion with bde it's been decided that they
really ought to go in libc.
There are two already existing libc functions for manipulating file
modes: setmode and getmode. In keeping with these flags_to_string
has been renamed getflags and string_to_flags to setflags.
The manual page could probably be improved upon ;)
