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 ;)
respectively, in accordance with SUSv2.
This differs from the approach taken in NetBSD, but provides
less obscure error messages in at least the EISDIR case and
does not take up additional disk space for new binaries.
PR: 13071
PR: 13074
Requested by: James Howard <howardjp@wam.umd.edu>
This will make a number of things easier in the future, as well as (finally!)
avoiding the Id-smashing problem which has plagued developers for so long.
Boy, I'm glad we're not using sup anymore. This update would have been
insane otherwise.
