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From: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Should find traverse symbolic links?
Message-ID: <19296@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 25 Feb 91 20:04:36 GMT
References: <1991Feb25.130613.2553@phri.nyu.edu>
Reply-To: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 21

In article <1991Feb25.130613.2553@phri.nyu.edu> roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes:
> 
> 	I was surprised to observe today that if you do "find dir ..." and
> dir is a symbolic link to a directory, the directory isn't entered.  Thus:
> 
> 	This seems to me to be The Wrong Thing.  Is it a bug in find, or
> was it really intended to work that way?

It seems questionable but I'd think there'd be a lot more problems if
if did follow links - symlink loops lurk everywhere, not to mention
links in user modifiable directories pointing into system stuff to
trap the unwary root.

For the initial case of the argument being a symlink, you can probably
use the "find /link/" trailing slash kludge, as long as you expect it's
going to be a link to a directory or a directory..

-- 
George Robbins - now working for,     uucp:   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing:   domain: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com
Commodore, Engineering Department     phone:  215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)


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