Either I can't read a manpage, or the manpage is wrong, or `/bin/ls' is
misbehaving. All three options seem far-fetched.
I expect `ls -l foo' and `ls -lL bar' to produce the same results if
`bar' is a symbolic link to `foo'. But this doesn't happen.
$ cd /tmp
$ touch foo
$ /bin/ls -l foo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vladimir vladimir 0 05-08 10:47 foo
$ ln -s foo bar
$ /bin/ls -l bar
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vladimir vladimir 3 05-08 10:47 bar -> foo
$ /bin/ls -lL bar
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vladimir vladimir 0 05-08 10:47 bar
Here's the excerpt from the man page for `ls':
-L, --dereference
when showing file information for a symbolic link, show informa-
tion for the file the link references rather than for the link
itself
What am I missing?
--- Vladimir
P.S. POSIX seems to make an exception specifically for the case `-lL'.
The Single Unix Specification Issue 6 says:
[http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/toc.htm]
-L Evaluate the file information and file type for all symbolic links
(whether named on the command line or encountered in a file
hierarchy) to be those of the file referenced by the link, and not
the link itself; however, ls shall write the name of the link
itself and not the file referenced by the link. When -L is used
with -l, write the contents of symbolic links in the long format
(see the STDOUT section).
STDOUT
If both -l and -L are specified, the following information shall be
written:
"%s %u %s %s %u %s %s\n", <file mode>, <number of links>,
<owner name>, <group name>, <number of bytes in the file>,
<date and time>, <pathname of link>
where all fields except <pathname of link> shall be for the file
resolved from the symbolic link.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vladimir G. Ivanovic http://leonora.org/~vladimir
2770 Cowper St. vladimir@xxxxxxx
Palo Alto, CA 94306-2447 +1 650 678 8014
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