coreutils: Test manpage improvements (-e, -w and -x)

[Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña]

Package: coreutils
Priority: wishlist
Version: 5.2.1-2
Tags: patch upstream

(Note: I'm CCing address@hidden, if this is not the appropiate way 
to forward upstream, please bear with me)

The description of how -e behaves is somewhat ambiguous in test's manpage. 
The manpage says that it will return true if the FILE exists but, for 
symbolic links it will only return true if the FILE it points to exists:

-----------------------------
$ touch test
$ ln -s test testl
$ [ -e testl ] && echo true
true
$ rm test
$ [ -e testl ] && echo true
-----------------------------

Other manpage improvements in the patch include those present in *BSDs
manpages [1] and related to -w and -x.

Maybe the manpage could be ammended (see the patch attached).
If the manpage is reviewed maybe it's worth reviewing also Debian 
bug #230957 (I can't understand why it is tagged 'wontfix' by the Debian 
maintainer)


Regards

Javier


[1] 
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=test&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=OpenBSD+Current&arch=i386&format=html

PS: It looks like *BSDs resolve this ambiguity by having -e return true if
the file exists regardless of its type. However a change to this behaviour 
will probably break a lot of stuff that depend on it.