Package: sed
Version: 4.1.2-8
Severity: normal
Hello,
If I use sed -i to attempt to operate on a symlink in place, sed breaks
the symlink and creates a new file. I believe it should instead follow the
symlink and edit the target file in place. After all, the man page
says:
-i[SUFFIX], --in-place[=SUFFIX]
edit files in place (makes backup if extension supplied)
^^^^^^^^
This is what currently happens:
benjo[16]:~% echo foo > a
benjo[17]:~% ln -s a b
benjo[18]:~% sed -i s/foo/bar/ b
benjo[19]:~% ls -l a b
-rw-r--r-- 1 kmccarty kmccarty 4 2005-08-18 16:33 a
-rw-r--r-- 1 kmccarty kmccarty 4 2005-08-18 16:33 b
benjo[20]:~% cat a b
foo
bar
In my opinion the correct output after the sed command should be as
follows:
benjo[19]:~% ls -l a b
-rw-r--r-- 1 kmccarty kmccarty 4 2005-08-18 16:33 a
lrwxrwxrwx 1 kmccarty kmccarty 4 2005-08-18 16:33 b -> a
benjo[20]:~% cat a b
bar
bar
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-2-386
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Versions of packages sed depends on:
ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-22 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
-- no debconf information
regards,
--
Kevin B. McCarty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Physics Department
WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/ Princeton University
GPG: public key ID 4F83C751 Princeton, NJ 08544
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