Re: publicfile peculilarities, ftpd trouble

On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 06:12:24PM -0600, Jeff Bachtel wrote:
> EPLF might be easier to parse, but it is still not technically
> superior.

Why not?  Last I checked, technically superior != feature-full.

> It is missing, for instance, a fact flag for the PUT'ability of a
> file. (Because publicfile doesn't support PUT, DJB deigned not to
> include that information in the EPLF specification).

You can't exactly infer PUTability from a /bin/ls listing either.
PUTability is a function of the server and the environment it's running
in; a client may infer from a /bin/ls listing that the directory
and/or existing file are writable, but if it guessed wrong about the
server's effective UID/GID, or if the server is in read-only mode,
you're still SOL.

With EPLF, one has the option of adding this and other facts at any
point in time, and the client can safely ignore whatever facts it
doesn't understand -- the EPLF spec allows for that.  Trying to shoehorn
additional info into /bin/ls, OTOH, is far more likely to cause clients
to barf.

- Adrian