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bug#52115: Suggestion: LN command should swap TARGET and LINK_NAME if LI
From: |
Bernhard Voelker |
Subject: |
bug#52115: Suggestion: LN command should swap TARGET and LINK_NAME if LINK_NAME already exists |
Date: |
Fri, 26 Nov 2021 00:02:46 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/91.3.0 |
On 11/25/21 18:53, Warren Parad wrote:
> It is too frequent a problem to know which is the correct order of TARGET
> and LINK_NAME.
I disagree: it is a one-time effort to learn the order ... similar as
for mv(1) and cp(1).
> Since the command already believes that it can't create a link to a file
> which already exists (and for hard links that the TARGET must also exist),
> instead of complaining, the command should just switch the order of the
> parameters.
The synopsis is already complex and confusing enough:
Usage: ln [OPTION]... [-T] TARGET LINK_NAME
or: ln [OPTION]... TARGET
or: ln [OPTION]... TARGET... DIRECTORY
or: ln [OPTION]... -t DIRECTORY TARGET...
and especially surprising if LINK_NAME is a directory name which the caller
wasn't aware of. Letting ln(1) automagically swap the parameters if LINK_NAME
exists simply adds more confusion and opens maybe a big race window:
what happens if another (malicious?) user B creates LINK_TARGET while user A
is typing the command?
Personally, I recommend the following option combination which results in
less surprises (see other cases below):
$ ln -nsvf somename othername
Especially when creating symlinks, I prefer to get an error early rather than
ending up with a symlink with a name or location I never would have expected.
Have a nice day,
Berny
- bug#52115: Suggestion: LN command should swap TARGET and LINK_NAME if LINK_NAME already exists, Warren Parad, 2021/11/25
- bug#52115: Suggestion: LN command should swap TARGET and LINK_NAME if LINK_NAME already exists,
Bernhard Voelker <=
- bug#52115: Suggestion: LN command should swap TARGET and LINK_NAME if LINK_NAME already exists, Warren Parad, 2021/11/25
- bug#52115: Suggestion: LN command should swap TARGET and LINK_NAME if LINK_NAME already exists, Bernhard Voelker, 2021/11/25
- bug#52115: Suggestion: LN command should swap TARGET and LINK_NAME if LINK_NAME already exists, Kamil Dudka, 2021/11/26
- bug#52115: Suggestion: LN command should swap TARGET and LINK_NAME if LINK_NAME already exists, Paul Eggert, 2021/11/27
- bug#52115: Suggestion: LN command should swap TARGET and LINK_NAME if LINK_NAME already exists, Ulf Zibis, 2021/11/29
- bug#52176: Problem with email list tags, Ulf Zibis, 2021/11/29
- bug#52176: Problem with email list tags, Bob Proulx, 2021/11/29
- bug#52115: Suggestion: LN command should swap TARGET and LINK_NAME if LINK_NAME already exists, Paul Eggert, 2021/11/29
- bug#52115: Suggestion: LN command should swap TARGET and LINK_NAME if LINK_NAME already exists, Chris Elvidge, 2021/11/29
- bug#52115: Suggestion: LN command should swap TARGET and LINK_NAME if LINK_NAME already exists, Bob Proulx, 2021/11/29