Re: chown xxx.yyy, POSIX, and LSB

[Jim Meyering]

Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:
...
> As I caused this problem originally (sorry!), I looked into the POSIX
> spec with tweezers and a fine-toothed comb, and I spotted an escape
> hatch.  Here is a simpler (and what I hope is a better) proposal: have
> chown support the old syntax regardless of POSIX version of
> POSIXLY_CORRECT.  This conforms, is because POSIX allows the "chown
> user.group file" behavior as an upward-compatible extension, so long
> as it comes into play only where a vanilla chown would report an error
> (which is what the code already does).
>
> Here is a proposed patch.
>
> 2004-02-23  Paul Eggert  <address@hidden>
>
>       * NEWS: Document the following.
>       * doc/coreutils.texi (chown invocation): Likewise.
>       * lib/userspec.c: Don't include "posixver.h".
>       (parse_user_spec): Fall back on USER.GROUP parsing regardless
>       of POSIX version, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 allows that behavior as a
>       compatible extension.  Simplify code by removing a boolean int
>       that was always nonzero if a string was nonnull.

Thanks for the nice work!
I've just applied that patch.