tag 19051 notabug close 19501 stop On 14/11/14 06:53, aaron brick wrote: > hi folks, > > $ ln -s / sl > $ rm sl/ > rm: cannot remove `sl/': Is a directory > $ rm sl > $ > > the presence of the slash is not such a great way to test for whether > or not a file is a directory. you may find the above example > contrived, but it occurs easily because bash's default tab completion > for symlinks to directories adds the trailing slash. this confused the > hell out of one of my students. > > thanks for your hard work! > aaron brick.
Confused me too when I encountered it first, but tt's required by POSIX: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/xbd_chap04.html#tag_04_11 But now I see that coreutils rmdir is inconsistent and doesn't treat sl/ as the directory. We should probably fix that up to be consistent with other tools, POSIX and other systems. thanks, Pádraig.
