For this, things are complicated. The first mention in the manual was in the 4th
edition manual (as an add on to exec(II)). The 2nd and 3rd editions didn't have
these in the manual (either as a separate page, or as an add-on to exec(II)). We
don't have good 1st, 2nd or 3rd edition distributions to look in. However,
there's a tape labeled 'last1120c' that we do have. This tape contains the last
version of the V2 edition of the C compiler on it (just after C got struct). On
this tape there was a libc.sa archive that contains source for execl and
execp. This source is sufficiently different from the V5 sources (which are the
next ones we have sources for) and have a slightly different calling convention
than later sources, suggesting that the early date for the last1120c tape is
correct (in that era, the epoch changed every year, leading to a one or two year
ambiguity on when the files could have been modified) and it should be though of
as V2. Since this was also a time of compiler development, and the calling
convetions are known to be under evolution, and since the rest of the sources in
libc.sa are consistent, that's further evidence that V2 is likely. Finally, 2nd
edition was the last version to fully support the 11/20 because it lacked many
basic features and bell labs moved off it to the 11/45 as soon as they could
afford to buy one, around this time era. The unix manuals make it sound like V3
might have supported the 11/20, but the same intro could also be read to mean it
didn't, at all, and that V3 was the first rewrite for the 11/45 ahead of the
rewrite in C that came with V4.
Taken together, the evidence leans most heavily to V2 (90% IMHO), and slightly
to V3 (8%) or possibly V4 (2%). I've not put all this in the man page, but have
left it here in case someone notices in the future that V4 is the first manual
page for it.
Rendering of execle was missing a comma between the NULL argument and envp.
For unclear reasons, POSIX' definition of these routines comments out the
mandatory trailing NULL argument. That seems unnecessary and probably
(reasonably) confuses mdoc.
For unclear reasons, POSIX' definition of these routines spells NULL as
"(char *)0." This is needlessly unclear. One guess might be that POSIX
targets more exotic computer architectures than FreeBSD does. Fortunately,
there is no such problem on any reasonable platform for FreeBSD to support.
Spell NULL as NULL.
The comma was probably removed in r117204 while the comment and creative
spelling of NULL were added in r116537 (both 15 years ago).
Renumber cluase 4 to 3, per what everybody else did when BSD granted
them permission to remove clause 3. My insistance on keeping the same
numbering for legal reasons is too pedantic, so give up on that point.
Submitted by: Jan Schaumann <jschauma@stevens.edu>
Pull Request: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/pull/96
Set _PATH_DEFPATH to
/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin. This is the
path in the default class in the default /etc/login.conf,
excluding ~/bin which would not be expanded properly in a string
constant.
For normal logins, _PATH_DEFPATH is overridden by /etc/login.conf,
~/.login_conf or shell startup files. _PATH_DEFPATH is still used as a
default by execlp(), execvp(), posix_spawnp() and sh if PATH is not set, and
by cron. Especially the latter is a common trap (most recently in PR
204813).
PR: 204813
Reviewed by: secteam (delphij), alfred
Adding exevpe() has caused some ports to break. Even though execvpe() is
a useful routine, it does not conform to any standards.
This patch is a little bit different from the patch sent to the mailing
list. I forgot to remove execvpe from the Symbol.map (which does not
seem to miscompile libc, though).
Reviewed by: davidxu
Approved by: philip
can be used as replacements for exec/fork in a lot of cases. This
change also added execvpe() which allows environment variable
PATH to be used for searching executable file, it is used for
implementing posix_spawnp().
PR: standards/122051
Change execvp to be a wrapper around execvP. This is necessary for some
of the /rescue pieces. It may also be more generally applicable as well.
Submitted by: Tim Kientzle <kientzle@acm.org>
Approved by: Silence on arch@
Also fixed the rest of ell (list) functions prototypes to include
a (commented out) terminating null pointer.
Pointed out by: bde
Obtained from: POSIX.1-2001
Glanced at by: imp
to POSIX.2. In particular:
- don't retry for ETXTBSY. This matches what sh(1) does. The retry code
was broken anyway. It only slept for several seconds for the first few
retries. Then it retried without sleeping.
- don't abort the search for errors related to the path prefix, in
particular for ENAMETOOLONG, ENOTDIR, ELOOP. This fixes PR1487. sh(1)
gets this wrong in the opposite direction by never aborting the search.
- don't confuse EACCES for errors related to the path prefix with EACCES
for errors related to the file. sh(1) gets this wrong.
- don't return a stale errno when the search terminates normally without
finding anything. The errno for the last unsuccessful execve() was
usually returned. This gave too much precedence to pathologies in the
last component of $PATH. This bug is irrelevant for sh(1).
The implementation still uses the optimization/race-inhibitor of trying
to execve() things first. POSIX.2 seems to require looking at file
permissions using stat(). We now use stat() after execve() if execve()
fails with an ambiguous error. Trying execve() first may actually be a
pessimization, since failing execve()s are fundamentally a little slower
than stat(), and are significantly slower when a file is found but has
unsuitable permissions or points to an unsuitable interpreter.
PR: 1487
