Bug #808: Strange/confusing output from tempnam

From: jesusmc@scripps.edu Operating system: SunOS 5.5.1 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-1 PHP version: 3.0.4 PHP Bug Type: Misbehaving function Bug description: Strange/confusing output from tempnam I put this info as a note to the function, including it here as a bug report just in case. This function has an strange and potentially dangerous behavior. When using the code: <PRE> <? $listfile = tempnam("tmp","q"); echo($listfile . "\n"); ?> </PRE> and running it with the stand-alone version of php3, the following are the results: (Assume that you are in dir /home/user/foo) <OL> <LI>If the subdir "tmp" does not exist <PRE> Content-type: text/html /var/tmp/qAAAa001Nh </PRE> </LI> <LI>If the subdir "tmp" exists <PRE> Content-type: text/html tmp/qAAAa001Ob </PRE> </LI> </OL> The latter is the intended answer in the first place. My impression was that the function returns a unique filename, so I fail to see the advantage of making it search through the filesystem or the path var. <P> Now, if you change the first line of the code to read: <PRE> $listfile = tempnam("./tmp","q"); </PRE> You get the same behavior as the previous 2 cases, but if you use: <PRE> $listfile = tempnam("","q"); </PRE> The results is: <PRE> Content-type: text/html /var/tmp/qAAAa001PI </PRE> No matter if subdir "tmp" exists or not, when the expected output will be a unique filename w/o directory path. <P> This is useful because this temp filename will be used to create a file in different directories, depending on the values of one or more variables from a form. <P> This behavior should be (a) fixed or (b) documented clearly. I did not see this mentioned in the PHP/FI manual either. === Extra info === PHP was compiled with a command line like: ./configure --prefix=/foo/bar/php3 --without-gd --with-msql=/foo/bar/mSQL --with-config-file-path=/foo/bar/php3 --enable-track-vars --enable-magic-quotes --with-apache=/foo/bar/src/apache_1.3.1 -- PHP Development Mailing List http://www.php.net/ To unsubscribe send an empty message to php-dev-unsubscribe@lists.php.net For help: php-dev-help@lists.php.net