Dir::open("a_file") succeeds

[pjw91]

Should Dir::open succeeds when it's given a file?

[tailhook]

By looking at history, it looks like it might be a deliberate decision at some point (there is a test which is reversed). But unfortunately it was early on for the project, there is no issue to cite for a motivation. I need to think about it more.

In case we want to fix it, what's your use case? Just to make sure I understand the problem.

[pjw91]

When I first looked at the code (0.1.18, via docs.rs), I noticed that the O_PATH is used instead of O_DIRECTORY (on Linux).

Then I noticed that it was changed to O_DIRECTORY then to O_PATH again (on master branch, by #23).

The flag O_DIRECTORY is specified in POSIX.1-2008 and added in Linux 2.1.126, but not in POSIX.1-2001, just like O_CLOEXEC (added in Linux 2.6.23), and O_NOFOLLOW. [ref]

Thus, if O_CLOEXEC is available, O_DIRECTORY is available, too.

Moreover, IMHO, on those platforms where O_DIRECTORY is unavailable, this crate should check if the given path is a directory or not. Otherwise the behavior of this crate is inconsistent across different platforms.