On 01/15/2013 09:23 AM, Ken Irving wrote: > (Previously sent in error to the bug-gnu-utils list.) > > I've been using symbolic links in a non-file-related way, e.g., to store > arbitrary string values, but find that if I try to create a symlink with > an empty 'target' name, e.g., as 'ln -s "" foo', the error message emitted > is not really correct. > > $ ln -s "" foo > ln: creating symbolic link `foo' -> `': No such file or directory > $ ln -sf "" foo > ln: creating symbolic link `foo' -> `': No such file or directory > > A link can be created when no file or directory exists, e.g., > > $ stat x || ln -s x foo && echo ok > stat: cannot stat `x': No such file or directory > ok > > so it seems that 'No such file or directory' must not be the actual > reason for the failure. Perhaps something like 'null target name' > would be more accurate? > > I only happened upon this in working on a test script, and have no > expectation for the operation to succeed. > > Thanks > > Ken Irving
Thanks for the report, however this particular issue has previously dicussed: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2012-11/msg00008.html The problem is that some coreutils programs do handle this special case - i.e. "" as argument for file names - while others do not. But no-one came up with patches to fix it yet - including me ;-) Have a nice day, Berny
