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Bugtraq archives for 4th quarter (Oct-Dec) 1996: Re: mktemp() and friends

Re: mktemp() and friends

Benedikt Stockebrand (benediktdevnull.ruhr.de)
Tue, 24 Dec 1996 02:34:45 +0100 

Darren Reed <avaloncoombs.anu.edu.au> writes:

> Then there are temporary files used in shell scripts - quite often root
> cornjobs get implemented to write to some file in /tmp

A more reasonable approach would be to use $UID and/or $$ and/or
$RANDOM and/or `date +%s` (if you've got a GNU date) in the file name.
Like /tmp/cron.daily.`date +%s`.$$ --- one of my favourites.

> (I prefer to use /, ~root or /etc).

While it is acceptable to put temporary stuff in ~, /tmp has the
advantage that it may be cleaned up after a reboot.  And consider both
/ and /etc potentially both small and mounted R/O.  So if you want to
stay portable, stick with /tmp.  Finally, what if you're using an
NFS-mounted ~ and run the same stuff on multiple machines --- ok,
that's usually not a problem with ~root, but you can't generalize this
approach.


    Ben

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