Re: readdir() loses entries on ramfs and tmpfs

[Legacy Fishtank <garzik@havoc.gtf.org>]

On Wed, Dec 26, 2001 at 07:50:11PM -0500, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> I got a report that GNU Midnight Commander fails to erase some directories 
> on tmpfs from the first attempt.  However, it succeeds the next time.
[...]
>     while ((d = readdir(dir)) != NULL) {
> 	printf("%s\n", d->d_name);
> 	rmdir(d->d_name);
>     }
[...]
> I'm sorry, I cannot elaborate more, but the issue seems to be very 
> serious.

If Midnight Commander does similar to the above it's pretty silly...

In Perl I normally do something like this in a loop (with a max-loops
limiter):

	opendir
	@dirs = readdir(FOO);
	closedir
	last unless @dirs;
	&remove_the_dirs(@dirs);

Clearly that's slack since you could have a million files in a
directory, but you see the point.  readdir(2) and getdents(2)
are inherently racy.  If your code does not assume such and take
appropriate action, it's broken.

	Jeff