Re: [bug-gnulib] new modules chdir-long, openat; also, save-cwd improvements

[Paul Eggert]

Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:

> A few weeks ago I wrote rough replacements for fdopendir and fstatat so
> that I could make getcwd.c more robust even on systems lacking openat
> and those other two functions.

Thanks.  This isn't trivial stuff....

> [*] With these three replacement functions we might be able to remove
> (or at least avoid using) getcwd's glibc-based O(N^2) code altogether
> in favor of Paul's openat-based version.

Wouldn't the openat-based version still be O(N^2) (and with a larger
constant factor) on hosts where openat and fchdir aren't available in
the standard library?

> For single-threaded applications, this change breaks the cycle:

Ouch.  Perhaps we should alter the API to allow this to work even with
multithreaded apps, or apps involving signals, etc.?  For example, we
could add new functions __xgetcwd_internal() and __getcwd__internal
that act just like xgetcwd and getcwd, except that they refuse to
invoke a replacement openat.