On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 12:45:58AM +0100, Paul Johnson wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 03, 2003 at 11:16:02PM -0000, Rob Dixon wrote:
>> Steve Grazzini wrote:
>>> The problem is that "-d $path" will return true if $path is a symlink
>>> to a directory.
>>
>> Thanks Steve, but are you certain? I can't test it here. As far
>> as I know this behaviour isn't documented anywhere.
>
> Steve is right (just for a change).
Yeah, I try to mix a few good answers in with the nonsense...
> I don't know that this is documented anywhere specifically. Possibly
> the closest is in perldoc -f stat (at the end on recent perls) and man
> 2 stat (on systems that have that).
It's one of those things that you can't find until you already know
about it. The idea is that (given a UNIX-centric view of the world)
absolutely everything follows symlinks, and only exceptions to this
rule need to be documented.
% perldoc -f -X
... (This doesn't work with "-t", and you need to remember
that lstat() and "-l" will leave values in the stat structure for
the symbolic link, not the real file.)
% perldoc -f lstat
lstat FILEHANDLE
lstat EXPR
lstat Does the same thing as the "stat" function
(including setting the special "_" filehandle) but
stats a symbolic link instead of the file the
symbolic link points to.
There's also some good stuff in the description of the "follow" options
for (cough!) File::Find.
--
Steve
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