Bug 9163

Summary: ln -sf doesn't change symlink to directory
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Peter J. Holzer <hjp>
Component: fileutilsAssignee: Bernhard Rosenkraenzer <bero>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 6.1   
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2000-02-06 19:30:53 UTC Type: ---
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Description Peter J. Holzer 2000-02-06 19:02:05 UTC 
Demonstration:

First try it with regular files:

% touch a b
% ln -s a c
% ll -d ?
-rw-r--r--   1 hjp      hjp             0 Feb  6 19:46 a
-rw-r--r--   1 hjp      hjp             0 Feb  6 19:46 b
lrwxrwxrwx   1 hjp      hjp             1 Feb  6 19:46 c -> a
% ln -sf b c
% ll -d ?
-rw-r--r--   1 hjp      hjp             0 Feb  6 19:46 a
-rw-r--r--   1 hjp      hjp             0 Feb  6 19:46 b
lrwxrwxrwx   1 hjp      hjp             1 Feb  6 19:46 c -> b

As expected, the link now points to b.

But if a and b are directories:

% rm a b
% mkdir a b
% ln -sf a c
% ll -d ?
drwxr-xr-x   2 hjp      hjp          4.0k Feb  6 19:47 a/
drwxr-xr-x   2 hjp      hjp          4.0k Feb  6 19:47 b/
lrwxrwxrwx   1 hjp      hjp             1 Feb  6 19:46 c -> b/

the link is not changed and there isn't any error message, either.
Comment 1 Peter J. Holzer 2000-02-06 19:04:59 UTC 
Oops, I found the link :-)

It is created inside  of the directory:

% ll b
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx   1 hjp      hjp             1 Feb  6 19:47 a -> a

Not very useful. I still think this is a bug.
Comment 2 Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2000-02-06 19:30:59 UTC 
Actually it's not a bug.
At the time a and b are created as directories, c is still a symlink to b, so at
this point, c is a directory as well.
As expected and documented, ln -sf file directory is the same as ln -sf file
directory/file - it's the way ln works (100% the same thing cp does).