From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2017 20:59:15 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [TUHS] There is turmoil in Linux-land - When did rm first avoid
	going upwards?
Message-ID: <20170425005915.1249018C0D0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: "Ron Natalie"

    > Actually, it's the shell that calls glob.

Yes, in the initial expansion of the command line, but V6 'rm' also uses
'glob' internally; if the '-r' flag is given, and the current name in the
command argument list is a directory, viz.:

	if ((buf->mode & 060000) == 040000) {
		if (rflg) {
			...
			execl("/etc/glob", "glob", "rm", "-r", 
					    fflg? "-f": "*", fflg? "*": p, 0);
			printf("%s: no glob\n", arg);
			exit();
			}			

(where 'p' is 0 - no idea why the writer didn't just say '"*": 0, 0').

So "rm -f foo*", where the current directory contains file 'foo0 foo1 foo2'
and directoty 'foobar', and directory 'foobar' contains 'bar0 bar1 bar2', the
first instance of 'glob' (run by the shell) expands the 'foo0 foo1 foo2 foobar'
and the second instance (run by 'rm') expands the 'bar0 bar1 bar2'.


     > Glob then invokes the command (in this case rm).

I don't totally grok 'glob', but it is prepared to exec() either the command
name, /bin/{command} or /usr/bin/{command}; but if that file is not executable
it tries feeding it to the shell, on the assumption it must be a shell command
list:
	   
	execv(file, arg);
	if (errno==ENOEXEC) {
		arg[0] = file;
		*--arg = "/bin/sh";
		execv(*arg, arg);
		}

I guess (too lazy to look) that the execv() must return a different error
number if the file doesn't exist at all, so it only tries the shell if the
file existed, but wasn't executable.

	Noel