On Tue, Aug 21, 2007 at 09:36:45AM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
No. I can see 3 classes of commands that operate on files/inodes (I don't include those that operate on directory entries such as 'rm', though their argument are filenames): 1. Those that follow symbolic links because it would make no sense if they were not: 'chmod' and all the commands that operate on the file contents. 2. Those that operate on meta-data and follow symbolic links though both the symbolic link and the file have such meta-data (visible with 'ls -l'): 'touch'. 3. Those that operate on meta-data and do not follow symbolic links (by default): 'chown', 'chgrp', 'stat'.Did I miss any command?
Besides being wrong about chown & chgrp in point 3? You're arguing for enforcing a consistency that doesn't exist. No matter how strongly you argue, you're not going to change that fact. At this point I've quite frankly even lost track of what you're arguing *for*; suffice it to say that there is no interface available for changing the time on a symlink, that the behavior of touch is standardized by posix, and that the handling of symlinks is *also* standardized by posix. (Unless otherwise specified, the target of the symlink is operated upon, rather than the symlink itself.)
Mike Stone -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
