Re: GNU grep 2.4.2 on RedHat 7.0 i386

[tt]

"ben catherall" <address@hidden> writes:

> Does grep follow symlinks properly?
> If i am in /etc/init.d and issue
> $ grep nobody ../passwd
> It will return file not found
> If i add an extra ../ in
> $ grep nobody ../../passwd
> It works.
> 
> Is it supposed to work like that?

It's not a grep issue. Try 'ls ../passwd' and you'll get
the same error.

When use a symlink with 'cd', the symbolic path appears
in pwd by default, but .. will still point to the parent
of the real current directory, which in this case is /etc/rc.d
(as /etc/init.d is a link to /etc/rc.d/init.d).

The only commands (AFAIK) that can handle symbolic paths
in this case are shell built-ins pwd and cd,
and they have options -P and -L for choosing whether you want 
physical or logical directory (compare "pwd", "pwd -L",
"pwd -P" and "/bin/pwd").

If you need to get to the logical parent with an external
command, you must do something like

grep nobody ${PWD%/*}/passwd

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen