Re: coreutils bug with "ln x d/"

[Jim Meyering]

Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:
> While looking at cp, ln, and mv and thinking about how to implement
> the -D/--no-destdir option I proposed in
> <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2004-06/msg00142.html>,
> I noticed that "ln" has a bug.  If d/x is a directory and x a file,
> "ln x d/" creates a link d/x/x; it should report an error.  Here's
> a shell transcript of the bug:
>
> $ mkdir d d/x
> $ touch x
> $ ln x d/   # <-- This command should fail.

Yes, it certainly should fail.
Thanks!

> $ ls -li x d/x/x
> 17783 -rw-r--r--  2 eggert eggert 0 2004-06-25 00:12 d/x/x
> 17783 -rw-r--r--  2 eggert eggert 0 2004-06-25 00:12 x
>
> A similar bug exists with "ln -s".
>
> Here's a patch.  It adds a test case for this bug, and fixes it.
>
> It's pretty long; sorry.
...
> If you like, I think I can split
> up the patch into two parts: a code- and diagnostic-cleanup only, and
> a bug fix.  (I would do this by modifying my version to have the
> bug.... :-)

I would indeed appreciate that.