🚀 go-pugleaf

The file utilities (cp, mv, etc) eliminate some errors by always removing
trailing slashes from file names.  However, these errors should be caught,`
not ignored.  For example, in the command:

	cp foo bar/

the intention of the user is that if "bar" is a directory, the file
bar/foo is created.  But if "bar" is not a directory, rather than
producing a copy of foo called "bar", an error should be produced.
This is a simple way to protect yourself against typos in copying
files into directories.

Instead, the GNU fileutils produce a file called "bar", without any warning
or error.

My guess is that somebody tried using the GNU fileutils under "bash"
with filename completion, and had some minor problem because bash
inserts a / at the end of a path if the last part of the name is a
directory.  (Some part of the fileutils probably assumed that there
would be no trailing slashes in names.)

The Unix kernel properly handles names containing multiple leading,
internal, and trailing slashes.  The Unix file utilities also handle
these pathnames.  We pride ourselves on doing better in the GNU system
than in the Unix system -- removing limitations, and doing better
error checking.  If a user specifies a pathname which cannot be
resolved, an error should be reported.

The fix is not indiscriminate bashing of trailing slashes, as
currently implemented.  The fix is to remove the generic truncation of
trailing slashes, then to fix whatever minor bugs prevent the use of
pathnames containing trailing slashes.

	John Gilmore