Paul Eggert wrote:
On 07/12/2018 02:16 AM, L A Walsh wrote:
I'm asking why does 'ln' bother to tell the user that they are
wrong and do nothing useful? Why not just go ahead and create a symlink
The user didn't ask for a symlink,
User didn't ask for a physical or hardlink (-P) either. Just asked
for a link, kind unspecified.
and it sounds unwise for ln to be
second-guessing that.
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True - should **probably** have given them *SOME* link. Since
they didn't specify Physical or Symlink...either would be fine.
Sometimes, reporting an error and exiting is a
better thing to do.
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Unless they claim to want one or the other (-P or -l), unless
it is an "undo-able" operation (like one that deletes data), why would
you guarantee ln doing the wrong thing, rather than having a better than
50% chance of doing the right thing?
