RE: [21.4] Enable win32 filenames under cygwin
Andy Piper wrote:
>Are you planning to canonicalise the file or buffer names so
that
>c:\dir\file and /cygdrive/c/dir/file are treated the same?
I've thought about this. Yes we should probably do this but it would be
interesting to have some others thoughts on this.
My main thought is that Windows has so many different aliasing
mechanisms that the main issue is which ones you're going to allow for
and which ones you're going to ignore; you'll never get them all.
If you want a list, search the BugTraq (and similar) archives for
vulnerabilities involving the ability to circumvent filename/URL
access controls by using aliases. Off the top of my head, you have:
Case folding ("foo" == "FOO", usually but not always)
8.3 filenames ("C:\Program Files" == "C:\PROGRA~1")
Multiple dots ("..." == "..\..", sometimes)
Device files ("<anything>\LPT1" == "<anything
else>\LPT1")
Fault-tolerant Unicode (trailing invalid characters are discarded)
Host aliases in UNC paths ("\\localhost\foo\bar" ==
"\\127.0.0.1\foo\bar" == "\\0x7F000001\foo\bar" == ...)
I'm fairly sure that this isn't all of them.
Some of these aren't relevant outside of a security context (e.g.
device files), but others may be.
--
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements(a)virgin.net>