Re: [Bug-wget] Contribution on bug #45037

[Ander Juaristi]

On 05/17/2015 07:02 PM, Ángel González wrote:
> It's not possible to create a symlink with HTTP, so it's not a problem there. 
> And although
> I thought it was possible with FTP (I can certainly see symlinks on FTP 
> servers), a brief test
> sugests that wget doesn't mirror them, either?
Actually, an FTP client cannot know whether the resource some URI points to is 
a regular file or
a symlink. Theoretically, you could tell that by looking at the symlink bit, 
but if you request
a symlink to the server, it will return you the contents of the symlink'd file, 
not the contents
of the symlink itself. This makes total sense. What's more, in the case of 
OpenSSH SFTP, this
seems to be the only behaviour and does not seem to be overridable. Chances are 
other FTP servers
mimic this behaviour.

TL;DR From the point of view of the client, symlinks in the server are regular 
files as well.


--
Regards,
- AJ