????? ???????????? wrote: > 2010/3/12 Christine Tran <christine.tran at gmail.com>: >> 2010/3/12 ????? ???????????? <olga.kryzhanovska at gmail.com>: >>> This one, right? >>> -i[SUFFIX], --in-place[=SUFFIX] >>> edit files in place (makes backup if extension supplied) >>> >>> -i copies the content to a temporary backup file, truncates the >>> original (keeping permissions, ACL flags etc) and starts processing >>> from backup to original file, right? >>> >>> >>> Which purpose has this option (I can't look at the GPL code without >>> getting tainted by the GPL): >>> --follow-symlinks >>> follow symlinks when processing in place >> Yes, that's the one. > > I understand now how -i works but I am puzzled about --follow-symlinks > - why is it required?
I would expect that it uses O_NOFOLLOW by default, and --follow-symlinks is there to allow the user to disable that feature if he's really sure he wants to do that. If you were running the program as a privileged user you might want to have this flag enabled by default so that if someone sneaks in a symlink to /etc/passwd in place of one of the files you thought you were processing, you don't accidentally do something you'll regret later. -- James Carlson 42.703N 71.076W <carlsonj at workingcode.com>
