Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!udel!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!rain.andrew.cmu.edu!ddean
From: ddean@rain.andrew.cmu.edu (Drew Dean)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: How do you find the symbolic links to files.
Summary: See BSD man pages
Message-ID: <11209@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 27 Nov 90 20:57:42 GMT
References: <1990Nov26.150716.7268@specialix.co.uk> <1990Nov26.193324.5396@decuac.dec.com> <1990Nov27.155015.24837@specialix.co.uk>
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University
Lines: 25


There seems to be a simple problem here.  Symbolic links come from an old BSD
release (sorry, I forget my Un*x history, was it 4.2 or 4.1 or earlier; it's
not in _The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System_),
and the poster is trying to use them on System V.  Now, it looks like Sys V is
broken (what's new :-)), at least with respect to things like man pages.  Since
a great deal of Usenet (especially the portion on the Internet) runs a
BSD-derived Unix, the proper answer for BSD is RTFM, because it's all there.

For the record, tar (at least on the Unices I've used, which include Mach, 4.3
BSD, SunOS 3.{2,5} & 4.0.3), does NOT follow symlinks, it merely copies them,
unless given the h option.
I quote from the SunOS 4.0.3 man page tar(1), under options:

     h    Follow symbolic links as if they were normal  files  or
          directories.   Normally,  tar  does not follow symbolic
          links.

Under BUGS we have the following:
     There is no way selectively to follow symbolic links.

Does this answer all the questions ?

Drew Dean
Drew_Dean@rain.andrew.cmu.edu