Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 09:19:47 +0300
From: eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il (Eli Zaretskii)
To: rbabcock AT cfa DOT harvard DOT edu
Subject: Re: Code Standards
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu

> I'd want a warning that this rename() is very different than the one in the
> current djgpp or most other DOS C compilers.  If you try to use it to move a
> file to another directory, and the move fails because there is a file of the
> same name in the target directory, that file is deleted and the move is
> attempted again.  That's how I'd expect a unix rename to work, but a DOS
> rename would just fail.

That's right.  V2.0's rename() is Unix-compatible by design (as far as DOS lets
us, that is).  There is nothing in the ANSI standard to rule out such a behavior,
and it surely makes porting Unix programs a lot easier.  The most recent version
that might be added to the final version of the library can also move (prune and
graft) a directory to another branch of the file hierarchy.

As long as this is properly documented, what's wrong with that?