Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!BRL.MIL!mike
From: mike@BRL.MIL (Mike Muuss)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: SGI symlink bug?
Message-ID: <9006140634.aa20043@WOLF.BRL.MIL>
Date: 14 Jun 90 10:34:36 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 34

In the past two days, I have accidentally blown away two files
of mine due to (a) my inate dyslexia w.r.t the arguments to "ln -s",
and (b) a difference in behavior of "ln -s" on BSD machines -vs-
an SGI.

Here is a command sequence taken from a Gould PN 9080 running
UTX/2.0, a 4.2 BSD system:

15 spark> echo > foo
16 spark> ls -l foo
-rw-rw-r--  1 mike            0 Jun 14 06:28 foo
17 spark> ln -s /tmp foo
foo: File exists
18 spark> ls -l foo
-rw-rw-r--  1 mike            0 Jun 14 06:28 foo
19 spark>

Here is the same command sequence tried on an SGI Predator 4D/280
running IRIX 3.2.2:

1 wolf> echo > foo
2 wolf> ls -l foo
-rw-rw-r--   1 mike     graphics       0 Jun 14 06:28 foo
3 wolf> ln -s /tmp foo
4 wolf> ls -l foo
l---------   1 mike     graphics       4 Jun 14 06:28 foo -> /tmp
5 wolf>

If it would not be too much trouble, I'd like to ask the SGI
folks to duplicate the "foo: File exists" behavior, if it isn't
too hard.

	Best,
	 -Mike