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Re: symlink weirdness


From: Barry Margolin
Subject: Re: symlink weirdness
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 21:57:45 -0400
User-agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.4 (PPC Mac OS X)

In article <db3559c4.0409131611.28861482@posting.google.com>,
 rdnews@dahlsys.com (Roger Dahl) wrote:

> If your current directory is A and you want to create a relative
> symlink to a file in directory B in directory C, you need to type the
> path as it would look from C, not from A.
> 
> Though I understand that this makes 'ln' very simple (it just copies
> the argument into the link file), it doesn't make sense from a users
> perspective. When I'm in A, I can 'cp' from B to C without figuring
> out what the path to C will look like from B. 'cp -s' is even worse --
> it can only make links in the current directory.

Actually, the reason for this is that relative symlinks are interpreted 
relative to the directory they appear in.  This allows you to mount the 
filesystem anywhere in the hierarchy, and relative symlinks will work 
properly.  Also, you can archive a directory containing relative 
symlinks using something like tar, and the symlinks will be correct when 
you restore it.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
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