On 04Jul2011 23:18, Eric B. <ebenze@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: | I'm running FC14 and running into a strange situation with symbolic | links that I have never seen or noticed before. | | | If I create the following symbolic link: | [eric@eric-laptop ~]$ pwd | /home/eric | [eric@eric-laptop ~]$ ls Mail | draft inbox queue sent trash | [eric@eric-laptop ~]$ ln -s Mail/inbox test | [eric@eric-laptop ~]$ ls test | 1 2 3 4 5 | [eric@eric-laptop ~]$ cd test | [eric@eric-laptop test]$ pwd | /home/eric/test | [eric@eric-laptop test]$ ls | 1 2 3 4 5 | [eric@eric-laptop test]$ ls .. | draft inbox queue sent trash | | | The strange behaviour here is when listing the parent directory (..). | In this case, ls .. is listing the contents of Mail/ directory - not | /home/eric. ls is behaving correctly. Bash is presenting a ridiculous fiction to you via its "pwd" builtin, which lies. Try doing your test above again, and wherever you type "pwd", also run "/bin/pwd" immediately afterwards. Observe the difference: /bin/pwd tells you the truth and pwd tells you something easy to remember, but not the truth. | In the past, I always recall being able to use the parent identified | (..) to move up one level in the directory structure whether in a | symlink or not. It may be that bash subverts the "cd" command also to preserve the fiction, and you have done a "cd .." and returns from whence you came (instead of to the "real" upper directory). A symlink is like a teleport gateway - you are somewhere else if you cd through it. It is not, for example, like the "mount" command, which really attached is target at the mount point. | In this case, I would have expected ls .. to list the | contents of /home/eric - not /home/eric/Mail. | Am I wrong? You are wrong. You expectation has been misled by bash being too clever. | Am I seeing strange behaviour here? No. You only think it is strange. What is strange is the behaviour of the bash pwd builtin (and maybe the cd builtin). | If so, is there a way | to enable the behaviour I expect? alias pwd=/bin/pwd might remove the scales from your eyes. It is better to fix your expectations, because a symlink is not a mount. You're expecting it to act like a mount. Cheers, -- Cameron Simpson <cs@xxxxxxxxxx> DoD#743 http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/ Kilimanjaro is a pretty tricky climb. Most of it's up, until you reach the very, very top, and then it tends to slope away rather sharply. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
