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| -rw-r--r-- | doc/coreutils.texi | 12 |
1 files changed, 7 insertions, 5 deletions
diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi index 5d37be7d0..6e074f5fa 100644 --- a/doc/coreutils.texi +++ b/doc/coreutils.texi @@ -7712,11 +7712,13 @@ is omitted, only the group of the files is changed; in this case, @end table Some older scripts may still use @samp{.} in place of the @samp{:} separator. -@acronym{POSIX} 1003.1-2001 (@pxref{Standards conformance}) does not allow that, -but you may be able to work around the compatibility problems by setting -@samp{_POSIX2_VERSION=199209} in your environment. -New scripts should avoid the use of @samp{.} because @sc{gnu} @command{chown} -may fail if @var{owner} contains @samp{.} characters. +@acronym{POSIX} 1003.1-2001 (@pxref{Standards conformance}) does not +require support for that, but for backward compatibility @acronym{GNU} +@command{chown} supports @samp{.} so long as no ambiguity results. +New scripts should avoid the use of @samp{.} because it is not +portable, and because it has undesirable results if the entire +@var{owner@samp{.}group} happens to identify a user whose name +contains @samp{.}. Warning: The @command{chown} command may clear the set-user-ID or set-group-ID bits on some systems. The @command{chown} command is |