I don't know if POSIX standard has something to say about that, but here's a reference from GNU libc:
`man 2 symlink`: > A symbolic link (also known as a soft link) may point to an existing > file or to a nonexistent one; the latter case is known as a dangling link. On 29 April 2016 at 02:06, Andrey Repin <anrdae...@yandex.ru> wrote: > Greetings, Gene Pavlovsky! > >> I have an issue to report: > >> Introduction: On a UNIX system, `ln -s target link` creates a link >> regardless of target's existence. >> This is used in some scripts, e.g. Gentoo's `run-crons` (which I also >> use on Cygwin) uses a symlink pointing to the running process PID as >> lockfile. >> Issue: if `CYGWIN=winsymlinks:nativestrict` env var is set, running >> `ln -s target link` completely fails (even though running `mklink link >> target` in `cmd.exe` succeeds, same as `ln -s` does on UNIX). If >> `CYGWIN=winsymlinks:native`, a non-native link is created. > >> So, `nativestrict` might break some (admittedly unorthodox) scripts. >> With `native` these script work, but still a native link would be >> preferrable and it is possible to create, but a non-native link is >> created instead. > >> Bottom line, I think the native symlink creation code should be >> checked and a possibility should be added to create links to >> non-existent targets, rather than the current behavior of failing. > > This is actually an arguable behavior, even in Linux. I can imagine the > behavior is "undefined" in such a case. > But I'll leave final say to the more experienced members of the list. > > > -- > With best regards, > Andrey Repin > Friday, April 29, 2016 01:55:21 > > Sorry for my terrible english... > -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
