Re: "readlink -f foo" fails if the target of foo does not exist

[Dmitry V. Levin]

On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 06:53:22PM +0100, Thomas Hood wrote:
> Since I raised this issue in January 2004 there has been a
> positive development.  Miquel van Smoorenburg has written a new
> readlink program.  Currently the program is included in the
> initscripts package and is solely for the use of
> sysvinit/sysv-rc/initscripts in Debian.  However, the intent
> is to develop a program that can replace the one in coreutils and
> which meets the criteria we discussed earlier.
> 
> This program does not use the glibc realpath() function.  The
> latter function, contrary to its description in stdlib.h, does
> not return the canonical path of any nonexistent.
> 
> Miquel's program works like the current readlink program except
> in how it deals with a symlink chain to a nonexistent.
> 
> If, while canonicalizing the symlink chain, readlink arrives at
> a pathname whose target doesn't exist but the parent directory
> of whose target does exist then "readlink -f" and "readlink -ff"
> print the pathname.
> 
> If, while canonicalizing the symlink chain, readlink arrives at
> a pathname whose target and the parent of whose target do not
> exist then "readlink -f" fails whereas "readlink -ff" prints the
> pathname.

I'd suggest to leave current "readlink -f" behaviour unchanged.
If you need to add new mode for readlink(1), please consider adding
new option.


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