Re: [busybox/utility.c:recursiveAction] ? - followLinks, stat, lstat

[Erik Andersen <andersen@xmission.com>]

On Mon Jan 24, 2000 at 02:57:03AM -0800, Karl M. Hegbloom wrote:
> 
>  Tell me if I'm wrong... but:
> 
> 8<------------------------------------------------------------>8
>     if (followLinks == TRUE)
> 	status = stat (fileName, &statbuf);
>     else
> 	status = lstat (fileName, &statbuf);
> 
> /* ####? -karlheg     status = lstat (fileName, &statbuf); */
> 8<------------------------------------------------------------>8

You seem to imply that this code fragment snipped from busybox 
recursiveAction is incorrect.  From the stat(2) manpage:

       stat stats the file pointed to by file_name and  fills  in
       buf.

       lstat is identical to stat, only the link itself is stat­
       ted, not the file that is obtained by tracing the links.

So when following symlinks, it is necessary to use stat. For example
if ./foo is a symlink to ./bar, and we want to follow the symlink
from ./foo to ./bar, stat dereferences the symlink, and returns the 
stat information for whatever ./bar is.

To _not_ follow symlinks, it is necessary to use lstat.

What exactly is it you needed to know was wrong?  This looks
perfectly correct to me,

 -Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen   Web:    http://www.xmission.com/~andersen/ 
                   email:  andersee@debian.org
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