Re: lynx-dev symlinks to other users' files; broken symlinks

[Benjamin C. W. Sittler]

On Sat, 10 Oct 1998, Doug Kaufman wrote:

> On Sat, 10 Oct 1998 address@hidden wrote:
> 
> > for a full-featured shell account, the user should be allowed to
> > do whatever the system permits him.  It's not Lynx's business.
> > Lynx should respect the setting of the TMPDIR environment variable
> > at run time.  If the system doesn't support sticky bits, the user
> > can create a subdirectory in /tmp, writeable only by himself,
> > and point TMPDIR to that.
> 
> But lynx has never respected TMPDIR. This was brought up about a
> year ago when I submitted a patch for the DOS handling of temp
> directories. In unix, lynx uses the value for LYNX_TEMP_SPACE if set
> in the environment. Otherwise it uses the value for TEMP_SPACE, set
> in userdefs.h. If I remember correctly, I suggested that someone more
> familiar than I with unix conventions make the patch for TMPDIR.
> Looking at the current code in LYMain.c, however, it seems that it was
> never done. This can be done simply, in parallel to the DOS use of
> TEMP and TMP environment variables.
>                              Doug

True, but currently I set TEMP_SPACE to the value of TMPDIR in the shell
script which invokes Lynx.

This is a good point however, Lynx should respect the de facto UNIX
standard for this. It's a quick binary patch, btw ;)