Re: symlink weirdness

[Roger Dahl]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote in message 
news:<jwvr7p4pnka.fsf-monnier+gnu.misc.discuss@gnu.org>...
> >> ln -s `relpath $C $B` $C
> > Though I can't off the top of my head think of any other tools that
> > might benefit from it, I like that idea.
> 
> It's sufficiently useful for Emacs to have a function that does just that:
> file-relative-name.  It doesn't pay attention to symlinks, tho (more to the
> point, the function is a pure string-manipulation and works without even
> looking at the file system AFAIK) so the result might not work.
> 
> 
>         Stefan

Hi Stefan,

There's one in Perl too. It's in File::PathConvert, called abs2rel.

When would the result created without looking at the file system not
work? I don't know if it's true for all OSes, but GNU/Linux can have
symlinks use other symlinks, so is any special attention to symlinks
needed?

Roger