t takahashi wrote: > This is hilarious -- a program whose basic form has existed since > around the first moon landing has either you or me very confused. > > On 4/27/05, Bob Proulx <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > #ls as > > > af > > af is the contents of the directory.
Yes. > > > #ls -l as > > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2 Apr 27 19:38 as -> ad > > as is not the contents of the directory. Atari! Yes. But what is the problem there? My confusion is why you think there is a problem? The above seems perfectly expected behavior. [I don't see any of my stones under threat. They all have two eyes.] 'as' is a symlink that points to a directory. The 'ls' program is listing the directory. That is expected behavior. If you want 'ls' to say what type of file it is you need to add the -F, --classify option to the command. It is a typical user alias. ls as af ls -F as as@ I think that is what you want. In that case use an alias or script wrapper and specify the option. > > It is supposed to behave that way. But your statement confuses me. > > What other way would you expect it to behave? What documentation and > > for which program of mkdir, touch, ln or ls would you change? > > I would change "ls as" to list the symlink, and document "ls as/". That would break standards conformance and existing practice. That would be incorrect. That would be a bug. You can follow the standards for 'ls' here. http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/ls.html Here is the important part: If none of the -d, -F, or -l options are specified, or the -H or -L options are specified, for each operand that names a file of type symbolic link to a directory, ls shall write the names of files contained within the directory as well as any requested, associated information. The 'ls' command must list the contents of the directory. > This is hilarious -- a program whose basic form has existed since > around the first moon landing has either you or me very confused. But symlinks were added to the system much later. They were not around during the moonshot era. They were added by Mike Accetta in BSD, but I can't find an exact date. Well after the last Apollo mission. > Or I would change "ls -l as" to list the directory and get rid of the > slash trick. It's miai. This is not an either this or that situation. It is not miai. In GNU/UNIX a file may have many names. All are valid. A file may be hard linked or soft linked. Since soft links were designed to operate similar to hard links the behavior is also similar. If you had hard linked ad to as (possible on traditional filesystems using the 'link' command) then the current behavior of 'ls' would certainly be beyond debate. Symlinks work similarly to hard links and so the behavior of 'ls' in that case is the same. Symlinks are designed to be transparent as much as possible. > Another option is to document that ls and ls -l are nonorthogonal for > reasons that are mysterious. :-) > > > This is a serious question. The above is in exactly the order of your > > example. What did you expect? What was unclear? > > Lemme throw that back at you! Is this a ko? This is not a Debian bug. I suggest this bug be closed. If you want further discussion on this topic please take it upstream to the discussion list <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>. That is the appropriate place to continue this thread. Or possibly even further upstream to POSIX for discussion of changing the standard. > > Bob Proulx <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Nice to meet you. Pleased to meet you as well. Bob > P.S. to others: atari, miai, and ko are just jokes for Bob; please ignore > them. :-) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
