Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: ln -f
Message-ID: <3797@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 30 Jul 90 18:34:54 GMT
References: <1056@undeed.UUCP> <3770@auspex.auspex.com> <18475@rpp386.cactus.org>
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 21

>My complaint...

...has nothing to do with the issue being discussed in the article to
which you're following up; that was discussing the non-existence of an
atomic "remove and link" operation, which the previous poster had,
apparently, assumed existed in UNIX and would be used by an "ln" that
removed the target first.

But, in any case...

>is because 1). the behavior is useful [ obviously, since
>AT&T and BSD both have ln's with different behaviors and no one has yet
>decided that either is patently stupid ] 2). the behaviors are
>different so you can't know whether the ln on the system you are using
>is going to fail or succeed, depending on your definition of failure
>or success.

Which means the ultimate problem isn't that one behavior is "good" and the
other is "bad", but that they're *different*.  Standardizing on either
one would have worked (modulo windows opened by having to implement one
behavior with multiple commands on a system that provides the other).