Re: GNAT 3.01 Source For OS/2

[kst@thomsoft.com (Keith Thompson)]

In <dewar.831309275@schonberg> dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
> Joe said
> 
>   > Why don't you go and look ????   There is nothing in the
>   > pub/gnat/private directory.  You may be right about the README,
>   > but there still ain't nothin where YOU said there would be !!!!
> 
> Robert replies
> 
> Umm, can you learn to read just a ltitle more carefully, my message
> (and the README file!) says pub/gnat/private/old, not pub/gnat/private.

The source of the confusion, I think, is that the permissions on the
pub/gnat/private directory are set to "rwx--x--x" (711).  This allows
users to access files and directories under that directory if they already
know their names, but not to get a directory listing.  (There may well
be things other than "old" in there, but I can't tell.)  It's a common
way to hide things on a public ftp site while still allowing access for
those who know what they're looking for.

So, from within the ftp program, if you do this:

    cd /pub/gnat/private
    dir

it will give you an empty listing, as if there were nothing there.
If, however, you do this:

    cd /pub/gnat/private/old
    dir

you'll get a listing of all the files there.  You can't get to
/pub/gnat/private/old by traversing one directory at a time, but you
can get there directly.

It's arguably a bug in ftp that the "dir" command doesn't visibly
distinguish between empty and non-readable directories.

Robert: it might be a good idea to put the "old" directory directly under
"/pub/gnat" rather than "hiding" it in "private".

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst@thomsoft.com <*>
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