From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Daniel Phillips Subject: Semantics of setting an extended attribute to empty vs removexattr? Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:19:18 -0700 Message-ID: <200809241519.19202.phillips@phunq.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from phunq.net ([64.81.85.152]:54353 "EHLO moonbase.phunq.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752621AbYIXWzU (ORCPT ); Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:55:20 -0400 Received: from ip6-localhost ([::1] helo=phunq.net) by moonbase.phunq.net with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Kichc-0004aS-OQ for linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org; Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:19:20 -0700 Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Hi, Does anybody have an opinion on whether setting an extended attribute to empty using the setxattr interface is supposed to be semantically equivalent to removing the xattr using removexattr? I rather wish this were the case in the interest of a robust usage model, but I pessimistically expect to learn that, no, an empty xattr is indeed different from an nonexistent xattr, similer to environment variables. Regards, Daniel