Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!amdcad!light!bvs
From: bvs@light.uucp (Bakul Shah)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Should find traverse symbolic links?
Message-ID: <1991Feb27.193005.10867@light.uucp>
Date: 27 Feb 91 19:30:03 GMT
References: <1991Feb25.130613.2553@phri.nyu.edu> <15319@smoke.brl.mil>
Reply-To: bvs@light.UUCP (Bakul Shah)
Organization: Bit Blocks, Inc.
Lines: 33
In article <15319@smoke.brl.mil> gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>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.
>
>The fundamental problem is that there is no single "right" method of
>handling symbolic links. Sometimes one wants them to be truly
>transparent, and other times one wants to notice that they are symlinks.
Indeed. It would be nice if all tree traversal programs used a
common set of options for tree related choices such as crossing
mount points, following sym-links, descending trees, etc. (with
appropriate defaults). Not likely to happen for most existing
programs due to compatibility reasons but how about defining such
a set for new programs and extending old ones (if there is no
conflict)?
Suggestion:
-x (do/don't) cross mount points
-L (do/don't) follow symLinks
-R (do/don't) descend (Recurse) trees
I'd also like a similar set for turning *on* options so that
regardless of defaults one can specify an exact behavior. If
people don't like options that start with a +, how about -