Bug 1480307

Summary: behavior change in "cd f*"
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Karl Burkett <burkett>
Component: bashAssignee: Siteshwar Vashisht <svashisht>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 26CC: admiller, burkett, kdudka, svashisht
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: x86_64   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2017-08-11 14:26:21 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Karl Burkett 2017-08-10 16:13:05 UTC 
Description of problem:
cd wildcard behavior change from fedora 25.  Now, multiple dirs (f12, f13, f14) when the first is desired this "cd f*" returns "bash: cd: too many arguments"
Previous behavior took you into f12 directory.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
Bash version: bash.x86_64 4.4.12-6.fc26

How reproducible:
Very.


Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Actual results:
See above

Expected results:
See above

Additional info:
Comment 1 Kamil Dudka 2017-08-11 07:36:54 UTC 
This seems to be built-time configurable:
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bash.git/tree/config-top.h?id=bc007799#n30

Note that no wildcard is needed to get the fatal error.  It triggers whenever 'cd' gets more than one arguments.
Comment 2 Siteshwar Vashisht 2017-08-11 10:39:20 UTC 
It makes sense to show error message if multiple arguments are passed to 'cd'. Why do you think it's a bug ?
Comment 3 Karl Burkett 2017-08-11 13:40:18 UTC 
It is a bug because this is a fundamental change in behavior with respect to wilecards. 

I, and I suspect others as well, use the wildcard as a shorthand method of specifying the first directory in a list of similar names.  For interactive use, going to the wrong directory is quickly obvious and for scripts, I doubt wildcard usage is common.

Now, in terms of implementation on the system, Fedora 26 has introduced several difficulties with a simple, core command:

  There is no longer a standalone cd command on the system:
  (/bin/cd and /usr/bin/cd contain the same code)
    $> cat /usr/bin/cd
    #!/bin/sh
    builtin cd "$@"

    Problems as I see them:
      /bin/sh is not the correct shell in general terms it's a symlink after all, 
        /bin/bash is specific and has the builtin.
      $@ is already expanded by the calling shell, so the new instance of bash 
        does not realize that this is a wildcard request.

Your thoughts?
Comment 4 Siteshwar Vashisht 2017-08-11 14:26:21 UTC 
It is not a behavior change with wildcards. It is a change in terms of how 'cd' builtin handles it's arguments. It is non-intuitive to pass multiple arguments to cd builtin and expect it to ignore all arguments except first one. I fail to see how the example about '/usr/bin/cd' relates to this behavior. This behavior change was introduced with this commit[1]. The script under /usr/bin/cd is provided for POSIX compliance (See bug 820192) and was present before Fedora 26. 

[1] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bash.git/diff/config-top.h?id=3475994a81ce49cf3a50b6ceeb5ad719986aa5f4
Comment 5 Karl Burkett 2017-08-11 14:40:19 UTC 
We will just have to agree to disagree on this issue.  Strict enforcement does not necessarily make it right or acceptable to everyone.