????? ???????????? 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>

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