Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 08:48:16 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: joelh@gnu.org Cc: dchapes@ddm.on.ca, rminnich@Sarnoff.COM, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Improvemnet of ln(1). Message-ID: <199807110848.BAA16020@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <199807110708.CAA10210@detlev.UUCP> from "Joel Ray Holveck" at Jul 11, 98 02:08:46 am
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> > I've many times used ln(1) to create what you call 'questionable links' > > on purpose and I'd _hate_ warnings. > > You frequently link to files that don't exist? I generally consider > that to be putting the cart before the cat(1), er, horse. But it's > your system. I don't do it frequently, but yes, I do this occasionally. In a number of cases, I do this in makefiles, and I do this to create links into a non-existant object tree. > > If someone insists on adding such warnings then do it like mv(1) and > > cp(1) by adding an option to ln(1) turn it on. > > You mean, in the style of the cp and mv which both sport -f, and one > of which features the -R flag? The "-f" flag to "ln" unlinks an existing file of the link name; in other words, it's already taken as "force". It would be a mistake to issue a warning without some way to disable it, akain to the "rm -f" behaviour of "-f". One problem here is that it is likely that you waould want to *not* get the "ln -f" behaviour, yet you would want to suppress warnings. > Bottom line: Warnings are good program design. Requiring extra work > to issue them-- particularly when they're most frequently required in > interactive use-- is not. Clearly, you could wrap this with a script that uses test(1) to ensure the link target exists, and put your script in your path ahead of the ln command. Whereas in order to get the existing non-"-f" behaviour, I'd have to modify existing code. Note that "-f" is already taken on "ln", according to POSIX semantics, so it's not like you could overload it reasonably. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the messagehelp
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