Re: Bug in command "test"

[Philip Rowlands]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008, Abhishek Verma wrote:

> I have been training UNIX for a few months, and have come across a bug 
> (I guess so) With test command.
>
> The problem is, with -f option it reports a symbolic link as a regular 
> file. For ex: say there is a file "f1" of type symbolic link, then
>
>                If [ -f f1 ]; then
>                                Echo reg file
>                Else
>                                Echo Not reg file
>                Fi
>
> The above code should give output as : "Not reg file"
> But it happens to print "reg file".

This is not a bug - the manpage for test states:
  "Except for -h and -L, all FILE-related tests dereference symbolic
   links.

If the filename passed to test is a symlink, the target of the link is 
tested as a file/directory/etc.


Cheers,
Phil