Dan Jacobson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > # ls -l ksyms.8.gz > lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 2005-08-14 02:36 ksyms.8.gz -> ksyms.modutils.8.gz > # ls -L ksyms.8.gz > ls: ksyms.8.gz: No such file or directory > > Shouldn't that message be more like the following's?: > > # ls ksyms.modutils.8.gz > ls: ksyms.modutils.8.gz: No such file or directory
That would be an improvement. When you use ls's -L option, that makes it use stat(2) rather than lstat(2). To give the better diagnostic, ls would have to treat ENOENT specially when invoked with -L: it would perform an additional lstat on the offending file, and if that succeeds, it'd read the symlink, lstat the referent, and if it too is a symlink, lstat its referent, etc., until something (lstat or readlink) fails, or lstat finds a non-symlink. Watch out for cycles! That sounds like a significant chunk of new code, just for an improved diagnostic, but I think it'd be worthwhile. Anyone interested in the coding exercise? _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
