I've seen a number of scripts (mostly poorly written ones) blindly overwriting files, without actually checking if it should (or can) be read/overwritten. Is it worth using alot of checking (file existence, file permissions, files vs directories, files being (sym)links, etc.) before doing some important file I/O? One of the more common exploits appears to be, changing a file by a (sym)link to another file, and hence accessing a different file than the one intended.

In reply to is I/O checking worth it? by Beatnik

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