Realpath & context sensitive symlinks

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 05:07:20PM -0400, James Antill wrote:
> Michael Eager <eager@mvista.com> writes:
> 
> >                                                       This macro 
> > substitution only occurs when the file system is following a symlink, 
> > otherwise the macro is left unmodified.
> 
>  Why? Is it done just so you can display it "raw" in ls. I can't think
> of any other use for the "raw" value and a bunch of things probably
> rely on stuff being valid from readlink() (just hope nothing changes
> uid etc. before it uses them).

We've (often and vocally) wondered the same thing :)  It's completely
POSIX conformant, regrettably; at least as far as I can tell.  The
value returned from readlink () is not required to be "useful" in any
real sense.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz                           Carnegie Mellon University
MontaVista Software                         Debian GNU/Linux Developer