Package: coreutils Priority: wishlist Version: 5.2.1-2 Tags: patch upstream
(Note: I'm CCing [EMAIL PROTECTED], if this is not the appropiate way to forward upstream, please bear with me) The description of how -e behaves is somewhat ambiguous in test's manpage. The manpage says that it will return true if the FILE exists but, for symbolic links it will only return true if the FILE it points to exists: ----------------------------- $ touch test $ ln -s test testl $ [ -e testl ] && echo true true $ rm test $ [ -e testl ] && echo true ----------------------------- Other manpage improvements in the patch include those present in *BSDs manpages [1] and related to -w and -x. Maybe the manpage could be ammended (see the patch attached). If the manpage is reviewed maybe it's worth reviewing also Debian bug #230957 (I can't understand why it is tagged 'wontfix' by the Debian maintainer) Regards Javier [1] http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=test&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=OpenBSD+Current&arch=i386&format=html PS: It looks like *BSDs resolve this ambiguity by having -e return true if the file exists regardless of its type. However a change to this behaviour will probably break a lot of stuff that depend on it. _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
