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From: jv@mh.nl (Johan Vromans)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: ln -s gives wrong error message on Ultrix 4.1
Message-ID: <1991Apr13.095904.29716@pronto.mh.nl>
Date: 13 Apr 91 09:59:04 GMT
References: <1991Apr9.194356.24156@watcgl.waterloo.edu>
	<1991Apr11.080051.10756@pronto.mh.nl> <11998@dog.ee.lbl.gov>
Sender: jv@pronto.mh.nl (Johan Vromans)
Reply-To: Johan Vromans <jv@mh.nl>
Organization: Multihouse Automation, the Netherlands
Lines: 26
In-Reply-To: envbvs@epb7.lbl.gov's message of 11 Apr 91 17:00:12 GMT

In article <11998@dog.ee.lbl.gov> envbvs@epb7.lbl.gov (Brian V. Smith) writes:

| In article <1991Apr11.080051.10756@pronto.mh.nl>, jv@mh.nl (Johan Vromans)
| writes:
| |> [on a problem with "ln -s"] :
| |> I do not agree. To me, it is more logical to check source first. If
| |> you do not have a (valid) source, there is no need worrying about the
| |> destination. 

| No, no, no.  There is no reason that the source must exist when the symlink 
| is created.

*IF* the semantics of symlinks do not require the source to be
present, then I agree fully. In this case, you may consider EPERM to
be an error, and ENOENT a warning. And errors take precedence over
warnings.

In the general situation of an input and output file, I thing checking
input before output is intuitive.

	Johan
-- 
Johan Vromans				       jv@mh.nl via internet backbones
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