On Sat, 12 Jul 2003, Dan Mellem wrote: > Hi, > > I have a folder that's full of shortcuts to other files (called > 'shortcuts'). I'd like to interact with the original files instead of > the shortcut (.lnk) files. Basically, if the shortcut is created from > within CYGWIN (ln -s [whether CYGWIN=nowinsymlinks or winsymlinks]), the > command: > > $ cp -LR shortcuts/ shortcuts2/ > > will copy the original files (dereferencing the symbolic links). > However, if the shortcut was created in MS-Windows, all I get is a copy > of the shortcuts. The only difference between the MS LNKs and the Cygwin > ones that I see, besides file size/layout, is that all the shortcuts are > read-only. Doing an ATTRIB +R * in the directory didn't make a difference. > > This problem isn't specific to 'cp.' E.g., 'less' will work on an 'ln' > shortcut but not a normal MS-Windows shortcut. > > I'm using Cygwin v1.3.22 (Mar 18, 2003) on MS-Windows 2000. > > Thanks for your help. > -Dan
Dan, Cygwin symlinks are a bit more than read-only shortcut (.lnk) files. They have a special format, and they also have something in their "Comment" field (that you can check via shortcut properties). In short, you cannot easily create a Cygwin symlink from outside Cygwin. For exact details, see the source of the symlink() function in winsup/cygwin/path.cc. Igor -- http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/ |\ _,,,---,,_ [EMAIL PROTECTED] ZZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ [EMAIL PROTECTED] |,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D. '---''(_/--' `-'\_) fL a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-. Meow! "I have since come to realize that being between your mentor and his route to the bathroom is a major career booster." -- Patrick Naughton -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/