Re: bin/47333: stat -L undocumented behavior

[David Holland <dholland-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR bin/47333; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: David Holland <dholland-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: bin/47333: stat -L undocumented behavior
Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2012 20:02:35 +0000

 On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 04:30:13PM +0000, David Laight wrote:
  >  On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 03:25:01PM +0000, tobiasu%tmux.org@localhost wrote:
  >  > >Number:         47333
  >  > >Category:       bin
  >  > >Synopsis:       stat -L undocumented behavior
  >  ...
  >  > "stat -L" claims to "Use stat(2) instead of lstat(2).
  >  > The information reported by stat will refer to the target of file,
  >  > if file is a symbolic link, and not to file itself."
  >  > 
  >  > This is fine, and could for example be used to detect broken symlinks.
  >  > Except it's not what it does. In case of a broken symlink it will fall
  >  > back to lstat(2) and return the symlink info.
  >  
  >  So you can detect that by noticing that the output of 'stat -L' is
  >  still a symlink.
  >  
  >  The man page needs fixing.
 
 Please check the standards (since this is where this program came
 from, it isn't either native or historical) before proposing things
 like this.
 
 -- 
 David A. Holland
 dholland%netbsd.org@localhost