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Date:      Mon, 11 Jan 1999 08:14:15 -0500 (EST)
From:      "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
To:        malartre@aei.ca (Malartre)
Cc:        root@aew.k2.dorm.ncku.edu.tw, newbies@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: find a error in The FreeBSD User Guide (i guess)
Message-ID:  <199901111314.IAA25181@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
In-Reply-To: <36979C7F.2C771900@aei.ca> from Malartre at "Jan 9, 99 01:14:24 pm"

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Malartre wrote,
> Charlie Root wrote:

> >  $ ln -s mydir/dir dir
> >  $ ls -l
> >  lrwxrwxrwx  1 elvis  elvis    9 28 nov 18:56 dir -> mydir/dir
> > 
> >  because dir is a directory
> >  so it may changed as follows:?
> >  lrwxrwxrwx  1 elvis  elvis    9 28 nov 18:56 dir -> mydir/dir(/)?

> It is not an error, because if you do the command ls -l on a directory
> where there is a symbolic link, you won't have that (/) at the end.
> Try it
> Thank You

Nope, not true. A symbolic link will be just what you typed in. The
original poster was not correct in that there was an error in the
book, but the original poster's command would work too.

% ln -s /mydir/dir check1
% ln -s /mydir/dir/ check2
% ls -l check*
lrwxrwxrwx  1 cjc  cjc  10 Jan 11 08:04 check1 -> /mydir/dir
lrwxrwxrwx  1 cjc  cjc  11 Jan 11 08:04 check2 -> /mydir/dir/

There is no checking or any change made to the first argument by the
'ln' command when doing symbolic linking. That's why you can point to
directories that do not exist,

% ln -s /non/sense/path check3

No error. This is often useful if you have links to files that
sometimes do and sometimes don't exist, e.g. on a filesystem that is
not always mounted.

Note that the original issue whether to end a link to a directory with
a '/' is mostly a moot point. If I were to refer to a file in 'check1' 
or 'check2,' each expands so,

check1/file => /mydir/dir/file
check2/file => /mydir/dir//file

Which the system sees as the same file. It effectively ignores
multiple slashes and treats them as one. 
-- 
Crist J. Clark                           cjclark@home.com

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