On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 11:53:52AM -0700, Curtis Doty wrote: > touch -hr directory symlink
touch: illegal option -- h Hmm, what is that? Let's check a GNU/Linux box: -h, --no-dereference affect each symbolic link instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the timestamps of a symlink) No wonder I've never seen it before.... > test directory -nt symlink &&echo yes ||echo no That leads me to wonder what value bash is actually using when it tries to compare the timestamp of a broken symlink. I'd expect it to use the timestamp of the thing pointed to, but if there's nothing being pointed to, is it using 0? As in 1970-01-01 00:00 UTC? That would certainly explain your result.