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Message-ID: <19981025131356.A12915@stack.nl>
Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 13:13:56 +0100
From: Marc Olzheim <marcolz@stack.nl>
To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Cc: unix@stack.nl
Subject: Strange symlink behaviour
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Hi.

I found some strange (at least to my perception) behaviour of symlinks
using FreeBSD. All versions of FreeBSD I checked it on showed it:
2.1.0-RELEASE
2.1.5-RELEASE
2.2.5-RELEASE
2.2.6-RELEASE
2.2.7-RELEASE

snail:/tmp/test>ls -l
total 2
-rw-r--r--  1 marcolz  bin  0 Oct 25 12:46 a
-rw-r--r--  1 marcolz  bin  1 Oct 25 12:46 b
-rw-r--r--  1 marcolz  bin  2 Oct 25 12:46 c
lrwxrwxrwx  1 marcolz  bin  1 Oct 25 12:46 d -> a
lrwxrwxrwx  1 marcolz  bin  1 Oct 25 12:46 e -> b
snail:/tmp/test>mv c d
snail:/tmp/test>ls -l
total 2
-rw-r--r--  1 marcolz  bin  0 Oct 25 12:46 a
-rw-r--r--  1 marcolz  bin  1 Oct 25 12:46 b
-rw-r--r--  1 marcolz  bin  2 Oct 25 12:46 d
lrwxrwxrwx  1 marcolz  bin  1 Oct 25 12:46 e -> b

This seems OK, but:

snail:/tmp/test>mv d e/
snail:/tmp/test>ls -l
total 1
-rw-r--r--  1 marcolz  bin  0 Oct 25 12:46 a
-rw-r--r--  1 marcolz  bin  2 Oct 25 12:46 b
lrwxrwxrwx  1 marcolz  bin  1 Oct 25 12:46 e -> b
snail:/tmp/test>

Is this normal behaviour ? following the link if there's a '/' appended ?
I mean it isn't a directory or a link to one...

And if this is normal: how to follow two links then ?
since:

snail:/tmp/test>ls -l
total 1
-rw-r--r--  1 marcolz  bin  0 Oct 25 12:54 a
lrwxrwxrwx  1 marcolz  bin  1 Oct 25 12:54 b -> a
lrwxrwxrwx  1 marcolz  bin  1 Oct 25 12:54 c -> b
-rw-r--r--  1 marcolz  bin  1 Oct 25 12:55 d
snail:/tmp/test>mv d c// 
snail:/tmp/test>ls -l
total 1
-rw-r--r--  1 marcolz  bin  0 Oct 25 12:54 a
-rw-r--r--  1 marcolz  bin  1 Oct 25 12:55 b
lrwxrwxrwx  1 marcolz  bin  1 Oct 25 12:54 c -> b
snail:/tmp/test>

I'm quite eager to hear an explanation, since I couldn't find anything
about this in the man pages or in the FAQ.

Marc

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