Bug 36449
| Summary: | symlink(7) manual doesn't mention trailing slash, etc. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | Documentation | Reporter: | Gary W. Swearingen <swear> |
| Component: | Books & Articles | Assignee: | Tom Rhodes <trhodes> |
| Status: | Closed FIXED | ||
| Severity: | Affects Only Me | ||
| Priority: | Normal | ||
| Version: | Latest | ||
| Hardware: | Any | ||
| OS: | Any | ||
State Changed From-To: open->closed Utilities in the base system which handle symlinks, through a common interface. Tools outside the base system are not really within our realm to modify. After looking over the manual pages of the so called "rule violators" - it appears their behavior with regards to symlinks is documented, thus, I am closing this PR. This was also discussed with other committers who agreed on this action. Thanks! Responsible Changed From-To: freebsd-doc->trhodes Over to me. |
The symlink(7) manual doesn't mention how many/most/all commands handle symbolic link arguments which have trailing slashes. And the "Commands not traversing ..." section omits rule-violators "chown/chmod/chgrp" which also do not follow symlinks without a trailing slash. (Note that some commands, like "cat" (and presumably all others) do follow symlinks without a trailing slash.) ================ Fix: This probably requires long study and research to confidently fix this manual. Probably an interim fix should just add something about the three other rule-violators and a warning (in it's own section or near the beginning of the description section) something like this: The handling of symbolic links cannot easily be described for all cases, but in most cases, referring to a symbolic link by using its name followed immediately by one or more slashes ("/") will cause the system to treat it as the name of the thing the symbolic link refers to. This "following of the link" goes no further if the thing referred to is also a symbolic link. Note that when other parts of this file refer to "symbolic links named as command arguments", they only refer to such links which do not have trailing slashes. If nothing else can be done soon, the manual should say: This manual is untrustworthy, especially regarding symbolic links named with trailing slashes which can cause suprising behavior. How-To-Repeat: n/a ================