bug#70586: cp walks dir differently than rm and is hitting "File name too long" where this could be avoided

Paul Eggert <[email protected]> writes:

> On 10/15/25 09:36, Collin Funk wrote:
>> I'll have a look at that one too. Finding a reasonable way to define the
>> sort functions in terms of 'FTSENT **' will not be very fun though.
>
> Should be easier for ls than for cp, as fts isn't really designed for
> destinations so you'll have to traverse the destination by hand.

Good to know, thanks.

> As you say, this is all reasonably low priority, as only buggy uses
> and attackers create file names longer than PATH_MAX (and rm is the
> cure for that...).

True, I don't think many, if any, have run into path length limitations
without explicitly trying to (*).

It still would be nice to fix though. We should be able to create
files/directories if the operating system supports it.

Collin

(*) In recent years at least. I am ignoring things like FAT32 filenames
which were limited to 11 characters or 255 with an extension.