Date: Sat, 05 Mar 2011 13:15:03 -0800 From: Doug Barton <dougb@FreeBSD.org> To: Jilles Tjoelker <jilles@stack.nl> Cc: FreeBSD Stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Change in behavior to stat(1) Message-ID: <4D72A7D7.4000907@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <20110304190545.GA38881@stack.nl> References: <4D6BD83B.3040609@missouri.edu> <20110304190545.GA38881@stack.nl>
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On 03/04/2011 11:05, Jilles Tjoelker wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 11:15:39AM -0600, Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
>> I had a little script that would remove broken links. I used to do it
>> like this:
>
>> if ! stat -L $link> /dev/null; then rm $link; fi
>
>> But recently (some time in February according to the CVS records) stat
>> was changed so that stat -L would use lstat(2) if the link is broken.
>
>> So I had to change it to
>
>> if stat -L $link | awk '{print $3}' | grep l> /dev/null;
>> then rm $link; fi
>
>> but it is a lot less elegant.
>
>> What is the proper accepted way to remove broken links?
>
> A better answer to your original question was already given, but for
> that command, isn't it sufficient to do
>
> if ! [ -e $link ]; then rm $link; fi
>
> All test(1)'s primaries that test things about files follow symlinks,
> except for -h/-L.
I'd do '[ -e "$link" ] || unlink $link' but Jilles is definitely right
that simply using 'test -e' is the way to go.
Stephen, sorry to hear that the change in behavior to stat(1) was
troubling to you. A little bit of the history might be useful. I
originally imported stat(1) from NetBSD in 2002, but did not keep up
with the improvements that NetBSD made to it. I recently found time to
catch up with the work that they've done, and the change to the behavior
of readlink seemed like a useful one so I brought it over. hopefully it
won't cause too many more problems. :)
Doug
--
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