On Tue, Jan 09, 2007 at 10:00:03AM +0000, Peter Bortas @ Pike developers forum wrote:
File does not exist is pretty permanent.
no, if the file does not exist, the next line of the code could create it, if it's needed or just go on without it.
With that definition no error is permanent. The same line could change the permissions. Several applications actually do.
if the file does exist and there is no read permission than that is not the same as a file not existing and should be treated differently. fixing it most likely requires user intervention too.
They are both errors. If you want to fix the error you must treat it differently, but most Pike applications don't fix errors, they just want to report them to the user in a sane way.
a program that treats non-existing and unreadable files the same is broken.
False.
I can't think of any offhand where it matters if the file is unreadable or if there is insufficient permissions.
unreadable or insufficient permissions are the same kind of problem, but non-existing is a different kind of problem.
They are all different kinds of problems. We can group them in arbitrary ways.
non-existing in most cases is non-critical, whereas unreadable or insufficient permission may be critical.
There is no basis for that statement.