Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!ames!uhccux!munnari.oz.au!mimir!hugin!augean!sirius!nt!levels!ccdn
From: ccdn@levels.sait.edu.au (DAVID NEWALL)
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.sys5
Subject: NCR's symbolic links (was Re: Pack)
Message-ID: <966@levels.sait.edu.au>
Date: 1 Aug 89 10:41:00 GMT
References: <138@tcnz2.tcnz.co.nz> <485@umigw.MIAMI.EDU> <737@toro.UUCP>
Organization: Sth Australian Inst of Technology
Lines: 25

In article <737@toro.UUCP>, nick@toro.UUCP (Nicholas Jacobs) writes:
> In article <485@umigw.MIAMI.EDU> aem@Mthvax.CS.Miami.Edu writes:
>>greg@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@levels.sait.oz.au
SA Institute of Technology       Post:   The Levels, South Australia, 5095