NCR's symbolic links (was Re: Pack)
DAVID NEWALL
ccdn at levels.sait.edu.au
Tue Aug 1 20:41:00 AEST 1989
In article <737 at toro.UUCP>, nick at toro.UUCP (Nicholas Jacobs) writes:
> In article <485 at umigw.MIAMI.EDU> aem at Mthvax.CS.Miami.Edu writes:
>>greg at tcnz2.tcnz.co.nz writes:
>>System V only has hard links. If you modify a file, the link is destroyed.
>>(I'm probably explaining this badly).
>
> Actually, NCR has implemented symbolic links for System V.
NCR's implementation of symbolic links is almost unusable. There is no
way of telling if a link is a symbolic link or a hard link; and most
programs break when they come across a symbolic link that points to a
non-existant file (can't stat xxxx).
A related problem: A symbolic link that points to a non-existant file
stops ftw(3) from walking the file tree. I don't think that should
happen. It seems to me that ftw(3) is supposed to continue walking,
even after a file that it can't stat(2).
Grump. (Hello NCR, Columbia. Are you listening?)
David Newall Phone: +61 8 343 3160
Unix Systems Programmer Fax: +61 8 349 6939
Academic Computing Service E-mail: ccdn at levels.sait.oz.au
SA Institute of Technology Post: The Levels, South Australia, 5095
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