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To: Christopher G Mann <r3cgm@cdrom.com>
cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: ln behavior 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 15 Jun 1997 16:36:55 PDT."
             <199706152336.QAA04048@pooh.cdrom.com> 
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Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 01:24:43 +0100
From: Brian Somers <brian@awfulhak.org>
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> Greetings...
> 
> I'm curious why the "-f" parameter for "ln" does not work with directories
> under FreeBSD 2.2.x.
> 
> I.e. Files work...
[.....] 
> But Directories don't...
> 
> [hornet : r3cgm] ~/test - mkdir dir1 dir2
> 
> drwxr-xr-x   2 r3cgm  r3cgm   512 Jun 15 15:34 dir1/
> drwxr-xr-x   2 r3cgm  r3cgm   512 Jun 15 15:34 dir2/
> 
> [hornet : r3cgm] ~/test - ln -s dir1 dir.symbolic
> 
> lrwxr-xr-x   1 r3cgm  r3cgm     4 Jun 15 15:34 dir.symbolic@ -> dir1
> drwxr-xr-x   2 r3cgm  r3cgm   512 Jun 15 15:34 dir1/
> drwxr-xr-x   2 r3cgm  r3cgm   512 Jun 15 15:34 dir2/
> 
> [hornet : r3cgm] ~/test - ln -fs dir2 dir.symbolic
> 
> lrwxr-xr-x   1 r3cgm  r3cgm     4 Jun 15 15:34 dir.symbolic@ -> dir1 <-- Bzzt!
> drwxr-xr-x   2 r3cgm  r3cgm   512 Jun 15 15:34 dir1/
> drwxr-xr-x   2 r3cgm  r3cgm   512 Jun 15 15:34 dir2/
> 
> I can't seem to find anything in the man pages that indicates why ln would
> behave this way.
> 
> Looking forward to your reply..

Hmm, from the man page:
     Given one or two arguments, ln creates a link to an existing file
     source_file. If target_file is given, the link has that name; target_file
     may also be a directory in which to place the link; otherwise it is
     placed in the current directory.  If only the directory is specified, the
     link will be made to the last component of source_file.

You've created "dir.symbolic/dir2 -> dir2".

> --
> Christopher G. Mann - r3cgm@cdrom.com
> Walnut Creek CDROM

-- 
Brian <brian@awfulhak.org>, <brian@freebsd.org>
      <http://www.awfulhak.org>
Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour....