Path: utzoo!censor!geac!lethe!becker!hybrid!scifi!bywater!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Levels of soft links in BSD4.3
Message-ID: <4015@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 4 Sep 90 17:50:34 GMT
References: <1990Sep4.045427.2307@ecn.purdue.edu>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 16

>Just curious....  Does anyone know how many levels of soft links I can use
>in 4.3BSD?

MAXSYMLINKS is 8, so it's about 8 levels in 4.3BSD and 4.3-tahoe.  The
number was cranked up to 20 in SunOS, and possibly in other systems that
picked up the BSD code from Sun (it's probably 20 or more in S5R4 as
well).

>lns -s ONE TWO
>lns -s TWO ONE
>cat ONE
>
>gives the "too many levels of symbolic links" message.

Not surprising, considering that it has, in effect, an *infinite* number
of symbolic links....